Alan De Smet
Instrumentation Technician (Software Engineer)
Wisconsin, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolAlan De Smet is an experienced software engineer and instrumentation technician with 18 years building systems on Windows, Linux, and Unix—specializing in systems programming, UI design, database schemas, and installer tooling. Based in Wisconsin and currently developing GOES-16 weather satellite data analysis software at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he brings deep C/C++ and scripting expertise (Perl, Python, Bourne shell) to both research and production environments. His decade-plus work on HTCondor highlights strong skills in distributed systems reliability and integrating academic research into practical solutions. Open-source contributions show a performance-minded coder: he optimizes assembly for puzzle-game solutions and improved image-processing logic in a terminal image viewer, demonstrating attention to low-level efficiency and practical UX. Known for porting legacy platform libraries into portable C and rendering interactive million-point charts, he combines pragmatic engineering with a knack for squeezing performance from constrained environments.
18 years of coding experience
18 years of employment as a software developer
BS, Computer Science, BS, Computer Science at University of Wisconsin - Madison
Stackoverflow
1,740reputation
851kreached
8answers
12questions
tuples
top-5%
Github Skills (27)
benchmark10
assembly10
c-language10
gameplay10
image-processing10
ansi-colors10
benchmarking10
videogames10
cpp10
cprogramming-language10
tuples9
algorithm9
code-optimization9
algorithms9
optimisation9
Programming languages (12)
Github contributions (5)
atesgoral/hrm-solutions
Oct 2015 - Oct 2015
Human Resource Machine solutions and size/speed hacks
Role in this project:
Performance Engineer & Assembly Programmer
Performance Engineer & Assembly ProgrammerContributions:11 commits, 9 PRs, 6 comments in 1 day
Contributions summary:Alan focused on optimizing solutions for the Human Resource Machine game, primarily by creating more efficient assembly code. Their contributions involved refactoring and optimizing existing solutions for various levels, leading to significant reductions in the number of cycles required to complete the tasks. The user's work demonstrates a deep understanding of the game's assembly language and a strong focus on performance improvement.
benchmarkinggamespeedhuman-resource-machineassembly
stefanhaustein/TerminalImageViewer
Mar 2019 - Mar 2019
Small C++ program to display images in a (modern) terminal using RGB ANSI codes and unicode block graphics characters
Role in this project:Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:7 commits, 2 PRs, 8 comments in 1 day
Contributions summary:Alan primarily contributed to improving the image display logic of the terminal image viewer. Their work focused on enhancing the application's capabilities by converting grayscale images to RGB format to support broader image compatibility. The user also implemented features like centering thumbnails and preserving aspect ratios to optimize the user experience when displaying images. Furthermore, they refactored and optimized the image processing logic, improving code maintainability.
cppgraphicterminal-graphicsansi-colorsascii-graphics
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