about
I'm Stephen Craton. I've been writing code since I was 8 years old. Building websites, provisioning Linux boxes from parts a teenager could salvage, teaching myself whatever I could about the world of tech. After high school I relocated to the Philippines to lead a development team in Manila, where I spent five years shipping apps, building products, and learning what it means to work across cultures.
In the two decades since, I've worked across the full stack: web, mobile, infrastructure, high frequency trading, home automation... whatever needs building. I care about software as a craft. I believe in understanding what you deploy, in writing code that a human can reason about.
Living abroad gave me a bad case of the travel bug and I never shook it. Over the years I've made my way through Iceland, Ireland, Denmark, Japan, South Korea, and a handful of other places. Somewhere along the way I picked up a camera and never put it down. I shoot landscapes mostly. Photography taught me to slow down and pay attention, which turns out to be useful in engineering too.
My father is the classical composer John Craton. My mother was a doctor. I didn't inherit the musical talent or the medical degree, but I did inherit the stubbornness to spend years on something just because it's worth doing right. Lately I've been tinkering with game development as a way to reconnect with the fundamentals of performance driven code, and it's the most fun I've had writing software in years.
I'm based in Nashville now. I still shoot photos, still chase waterfalls on weekends, to TLC's chagrin. I think a lot about where our industry is headed and how we can get the transition to AI right, not just fast. I value experiences over possessions, craft over velocity.