Andrew Houts
Software Engineer at Wealthfront
Los Gatos, California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolAndrew Houts is a backend software engineer with a decade of experience building performant systems and shipping production services from Los Gatos, California. Currently at Wealthfront, he blends Rust and Node.js expertise to optimize core data structures and design scalable APIs, drawing on earlier work automating manufacturing lines and deploying containerized backends. An active open-source contributor, he has made substantive Rust performance and serialization improvements to the xi-editor project and added system-aware modules and tests to the widely used Starship shell prompt. Andrew is passionate about experimenting with new technologies and brings a pragmatic focus on metrics, testing, and avoiding unnecessary data copies—small improvements that yield big runtime wins.
10 years of coding experience
2 years of employment as a software developer
De Anza CollegeComputer Science, Software Emphasis, Computer Science, Computer Science, Software Emphasis, Computer Science at Santa Clara UniversityLos Gatos High School
English
Github Skills (19)
editors10
text-editor10
scripting10
testing10
data-serialization10
editor10
data-structure10
serialization10
deserialization10
script10
performance-optimization10
data-structures10
sh10
rust10
shell10
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
xi-editor/xi-editor
Feb 2019 - Mar 2019
A modern editor with a backend written in Rust.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:17 commits, 5 PRs, 28 comments in 1 month
Contributions summary:Andrew primarily focused on refactoring and optimizing the `xi-editor` project's Rust code, specifically within the `rust/rope` module. They made several code improvements, including removing unnecessary code, avoiding double copies during deserialization, and enhancing serialization/deserialization processes. Additionally, the user added and refactored code related to metrics and unit conversions within the rope data structure. This work demonstrates a strong understanding of the project's core data structures and performance considerations.
backendrust
starship/starship
Sep 2019 - Jul 2021
☄🌌️ The minimal, blazing-fast, and infinitely customizable prompt for any shell!
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:5 commits, 5 PRs, 13 comments in 1 year 10 months
Contributions summary:Andrew primarily contributed to adding new modules and features to the Starship prompt. Their work includes implementing the hostname module, the memory usage module, and enhancing the battery module with testing capabilities. These contributions involved writing Rust code, configuring module behavior, and writing unit tests to ensure functionality. The user demonstrated a focus on expanding the prompt's capabilities with system information.
shellzsh-themefish-themezsh-promptfish-prompt
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