version: 1
authored: 2026-10-26
total_lines: 212
provenance: "private archive, copied 2026-10-26, path withheld"
exhibits:
  - id: history-as3-class
    order: 1
    era: "Flash / ActionScript"
    language: "ActionScript 3"
    file: 01-actionscript-class.as
    lines: 36
    shows: "class, imports, encapsulation"
    area: history
    title: "A small class that hides its own state"
    rationale: "Every field is private and explicitly typed, and the whole public surface is two methods, so a caller cannot push the object into a state it does not understand. The constructor takes what it needs as parameters instead of reaching for it, which is why the same class can drive every siren on the screen without knowing where any of them are."
    honest_note: "Verbatim, including a latent typo on one private field (this.high rather than this.height). Left as found: the excerpt is evidence, not a portfolio piece."

  - id: history-js-easing-engine
    order: 2
    era: "jQuery + PHP"
    language: JavaScript
    file: 02-js-easing-core.js
    lines: 42
    shows: "easing + timeline core"
    area: history
    title: "One curve, used twice"
    rationale: "A named easing function is evaluated to give each letter its delay, so the spacing of an animation follows the same curve as its motion instead of a guessed linear stagger. Both directions build from one transform object, which is what stops the two halves of the same effect drifting apart over years of edits."
    honest_note: "Excerpt from a 2,195-line file in which easing curves are used as a spacing distribution rather than only a timing function."

  - id: history-php-media-pipeline
    order: 3
    era: "jQuery + PHP"
    language: PHP
    file: 03-php-encode-op.php
    lines: 27
    shows: "one encode op + the FFmpeg piping"
    area: history
    title: "Check the input, then encode in two passes"
    rationale: "The real MIME type of the input is checked before any command is built, so a wrong file type returns a message instead of a half-written artefact. The encode takes two passes, generating a palette from the clip and then mapping frames onto it, which is the difference between a GIF that holds its colour and one that does not."
    honest_note: "Row 20 is an elision marker: 34 lines of ImageMagick frame-optimisation options are omitted because they are disabled in the live code. This is 3,400 lines of procedural PHP with global state and interpolated shell commands; what is worth reading is the operational judgement, not the structure."

  - id: history-typescript-service-layer
    order: 4
    era: "React + TypeScript"
    language: TypeScript
    file: 04-typescript-service-layer.ts
    lines: 37
    shows: "types, interfaces, service layer"
    area: history
    title: "Validate at the edge, then do one thing"
    rationale: "Input is checked by a schema at the boundary of each procedure, so the data layer receives a shape it can trust rather than one it hopes for. Each procedure is a thin call on the database context, which keeps the router a description of the API rather than a second copy of the queries."
    honest_note: "The types come from a Prisma schema in the same project (Device, Telemetry and Command models). The router is shown because it is where the two meet."

  - id: edge-embedded-cpp-interface
    order: 5
    era: "Embedded C++"
    language: C++
    file: 05-embedded-cpp-interface.hpp
    lines: 28
    shows: "interface vs implementation"
    area: edge
    title: "The hardware stops at the header"
    rationale: "The header declares one function and one constant and includes nothing but Arduino.h, so a caller compiles without pulling the ESP32 WiFi stack into its translation unit. Only the implementation file knows about station mode, polling and millisecond timeouts, and it returns a boolean so the caller decides what a failed join means."
    honest_note: "Header and implementation are shown together, with a comment marking the boundary, because the point of the exhibit is the split rather than either file alone."

  - id: platform-nix-derivation
    order: 6
    era: "Declarative infrastructure"
    language: Nix
    file: 06-nix-derivation.nix
    lines: 33
    shows: "fetchurl + hash, override rationale, removal condition"
    area: platform
    title: "A patch that says when to delete itself"
    rationale: "The file records its own removal condition, delete it once nixpkgs ships 0.10, which is the part of an override that usually goes missing and leaves the next reader guessing. Pinning by fetchurl with a verified hash keeps the build reproducible while the reason for the pin lives in the file rather than in a commit message nobody will read."
    honest_note: "The whole file, unedited. It is the newest exhibit and one of the shortest, and it is the one that best predicts how this engineer works now."