About me

Hello, I'm Cailin

I’m a software developer who loves figuring out how things work and building things people actually use. I run on coffee, curiosity, and confidently pretending I knew the answer before I Googled it.

Studying

Software Development, Dixie Technical College

Focus

Full stack & infrastructure

Available

January or Summer 2027 internships

See my work →

Internships

What I’m looking for

Available

January or Summer 2027 internships

Have a different time in mind? Contact me

I’m looking for a full-stack internship on a team that will challenge me, teach me things I don’t know, and let me apply what I’ve learned in school to real projects.

I’m not expecting to walk in knowing everything. I want to ask questions, break things, figure out why, and leave a much stronger developer than I started.

My story

A little about me

            a41c9e0
            init
          

High School

Building from the ground up

My path into tech wasn’t the traditional one. Growing up, computers just weren’t part of my world, so I came in with a completely blank slate (and, it turns out, a lot of curiosity).

            7b2f1d3
            tech-program (deleted)
          

First Tech Class

Confused, but apparently promising

My school tried out a tech program for one year. I understood maybe 4% of it, but my teacher told me he saw a lot of potential in me.

I wasn’t sure what he was seeing, but I decided to trust him.

            c9e04a8
            dixie-tech
          

Dixie Tech

A Slight (aka Rather Steep) Learning Curve

At Dixie Tech, I quickly learned that having potential and knowing what you’re doing are two very different things. Everyone else seemed to know the words; I was still looking them up.

But I liked it. And I was stubborn enough to keep going.

            f3d8b21
            HEAD → main
          

Now

Still learning. Just considerably less confused.

13 → 56 WPM

I started the year typing at 13 WPM and got up to 56. That pretty much sums up my experience with tech: no idea at first. Eventually, I do.

The elephant in the room

What about AI?

easy:

Everybody either hates AI or loves it, and Thanksgiving dinner has proven there’s no in-between. So I’ll just say it: I love it. I walked into this field right as AI did. I’m still learning to code by hand, and I love that too, but AI now writes about 42% of all committed code. Time is everything… but so is quality.

AI is only as good as the person using it, and it will happily build the wrong thing beautifully. So I put the work into knowing exactly what to ask for and double-checking everything it hands back. Fast is great. Fast and broken is just a faster way to cry.

What I use

Claude Claude Code ChatGPT Codex Antigravity & more

How it helps me learn

When I don’t understand something, I ask AI to explain it. Then I ask why. Then I ask again, like a toddler, until it finally clicks. It’s the most patient tutor I’ve ever had, it has never once sighed at me, and it’s a big reason I went from knowing absolutely nothing to shipping real projects in a year. (And to any of my teachers reading this: you helped a lot too. You just needed more sleep than AI does.)

How I check its work

AI is fast. It’s also confidently wrong sometimes (which, yea okay same… and I wouldn’t believe you if you said you never have… I can feel it through the screen). So I read every change before I keep it, run it to make sure it actually works, and make it walk me through anything I couldn’t have written myself. I’m also learning more ways to double-check it, like writing unit tests and setting up AI skills that review my work before anything gets the go-ahead. If I can’t explain the code, it doesn’t ship. No vibes-only commits.

AI I’ve built into my projects

I don’t just use AI… I put it to work. My Daily Work Ledger uses Claude to write daily and weekly reports from only what I logged, and it’s been told very firmly not to make anything up. Nebula has a chat assistant that answers questions about a class’s shared resources and streams its answers back live, so nobody has to dig through a pile of links to find one thing.

In my free time

Outside of tech, I’m usually spending time with friends and family, drinking coffee, or finding an excuse to get to the beach. Ideally all three, but I’m not picky.

Group of friends in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle at night

Cailin posing in a glowing blacklight art exhibit

Cailin and a friend on a covered pier above turquoise water

Cailin standing in the ocean waves on a sunny day

Cailin and a young girl riding a roller coaster