Jack Brounstein
- Software developer
- Movie fan
- One-time national pop culture trivia champion (sort of)
About Me
I'm a senior software developer with a strong Python emphasis and expertise in building scalable web applications. I have a proven ability to quickly master new technologies, honed through experience as a bootcamp instructor. I'm passionate about solving hard back-end problems and a strong proponent of clean, maintainable code, robust automated testing, and efficient developer tooling.
Projects
Lexo
A daily web game involving rearranging letters to form words, built to explore AI-assisted development and modern deployment practices. It features a React/TypeScript front-end with drag-and-drop interactions and a FastAPI/Python back-end. I developed this using GitHub Copilot and Gemini Code Assist to accelerate development while maintaining architectural oversight, with automated CI/CD via GitHub Actions, Docker containerization, and AWS deployment (ECR and EC2).
Technologies used: TypeScript, React, Vite, dnd-kit, Python, FastAPI, Redis, Docker Compose, SQLite, GitHub Copilot, Gemini Code Assist, HTML5, CSS3
Microblog With Microservices
A microblogging platform I built to explore service-oriented architecture, featuring distinct FastAPI services for user, post, and feed management. Services communicate asynchronously with Redis streams and are orchestrated using Docker Compose. This also includes a statically-served React/Next.js front-end and JWT-based user authentication.
Technologies used: Python, FastAPI, SQLModel, React/Next.js, Redis, Docker Compose, PostgreSQL, HTML5
Enthought Assets Server
A Django app to allow Enthought staff to upload installers and documentation files and make them accessible to users with the correct permissions. Under the hood, it interacts with a Keycloak server for user authentication and was built using Docker containers to automate deployment.
Technologies used: Python, Django, AWS/boto3, Keycloak, Docker Stack, PostgreSQL, HTML5, CSS3
Cryptic Contests
A website for running contests for writing cryptic crossword clues, used by my friends in the puzzle community. It uses Celery and RabbitMQ to automatically close contests after a certain amount of time as well as webhooks to push contest notifications to Discord.
Technologies used: Python, Django, RabbitMQ/Celery, OAuth, PostgreSQL, HTML5, CSS3
Puzzle Master
A Django app to host metapuzzles online, with social log-in, answer tracking and validation and a PostgreSQL database, as well as a set of example puzzles inspired by (but significantly easier than) the MIT Mystery Hunt.
Technologies used: Python, Django, OAuth, PostgreSQL, HTML5, CSS3
Set
Implementation of the card game Set. Written in under 16 hours for a Coding Dojo hackathon, where it earned first place.
Technologies used: JavaScript, jQuery, SVG, HTML5, CSS3
Anything Else?
While with Coding Dojo, I wrote up explanations of some tricky beginner-level programming concepts for students, a guide to lambda functions in Python and a (non-technical) introduction to Big O notation.
I was part of season one of my friend Eric's podcast "Do It In 12", where people set goals to accomplish within three months. I tried to write a novel, though it ended up somewhere between a short novella and a long short story. It's called Yesteryear, and it's about time travel and also working in an office; you can find a PDF here.