Since the age of 18, Jimmy had been obsessed with the problem of automating software maintenance. This obsession triggered a journey that led him to become deeply knowledgeable about the theory of programming languages and program analysis. He went on to found a developer tools company and work for two others, ultimately earning a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Here, he completed his dissertation on “Meta-metaprogramming,” an exploration of ways to make program transformation and synthesis tools easier to build and more encompassing.

At the age of 19, Jimmy began to ponder how his technical training in formal verification and program analysis could lead to deeper principles about writing superior software. In the following months, he observed his own software engineering abilities rapidly skyrocketing. Upon starting work at Apptimize at age 21, his first experience working for someone else since graduating a year and a half earlier, Jimmy quickly found himself outperforming the other engineers on his team. This was quite notable considering many of them had, on paper, considerably more experience than he did. After a few occasions of sharing his knowledge, Jimmy realized his potential for making a far greater impact through an hour of coaching than an hour of coding. He started doing this professionally in early 2016.

Jimmy's teachings are drawn from diverse sources. Some are half-century-old concepts that remain little-known outside the research community. Others are amalgamations from the best writers in the software industry. There are also those that are his own unique insights. All these teachings stem from the belief that behind the plethora of languages and frameworks, there exist just a few unifying ideas.