About me
I'm Sebastian Seilund, a software engineer from Copenhagen, Denmark. I live in San Francisco.
I'm currently bootstrapping Userflow - a platform for building onboarding guides, product tours and more. No coding needed.
Also check out my work to read more about what I do.
Software interests
I guess I'm a fullstack developer. I've always been involved in both the back-end and the front-end. I've implemented countless systems by myself doing everything from spec writing, architecture, programming, server setup and deployment.
My favorite programming language these days is Elixir. Functional programming has really started to resonate with me. It resolves a lot of gripes I've always had with other programming languages. I dig the Erlang process model. The popular Phoenix framework is a breeze to work with.
I've also done a ton of Node.js since 2012.
I've worked on advanced JavaScript web apps since 2007. These days I mostly work with React. I use TypeScript whenever I can. I've also been a big Ember.js enthusiast since before 1.0.
Before 2012 I worked mostly with PHP. I've also had occasional experiences with programming languages such as Python, Java, Scala and Ruby, and in University I also got some C, C# and F# coding in.
I've grown fond of working with event sourcing and CQRS. It provides elegant solutions to a lot of problems that I've encountered in the past with basic (No)SQL databases, where you only read exactly what you write. My favorite event storage database is Event Store.
I also enjoy DevOps. I like smooth procedures for as many things as possible, and building tools often helps me achieve just that. In a small company, however, it's important to focus on getting stuff done, too.
Awards
During my career I've been very fortunate to be nominated/awarded for various acomplishments:
- 2016: 1 of 5 finalist for "CTO Hero Of The Year" at Nordic Startup Awards.
- 2014: Selected as "Talent 100" by Danish business media Berlingske Business, which is a list of 100 young talents with future leadership potential, for my work with Billy. I was in the "Entrepreneurs" category.
- 2008: On the team that won "Best Newcomer" at the Danish E-Commerce Awards.
Location
I was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1988 and grew up there. In 2012 I moved to San Francisco, where I lived for 3.5 years. In 2015 I moved back to Copenhagen for a year. In 2016 I moved back to San Francisco.
Education
I'm a self-taught software developer. I started learning to program around the year 2000. In 2008 I enrolled in the BSc. in Software Development program at the IT University of Copenhagen. At that time I had already been working professionally with software for several years, but I learned a lot of important software skills that I wouldn't want to be without today. I put my bachelor on hold in 2011 to focus on the launch of Billy, and have never had a chance to get back. And at this point I probably never will.