About Jonathan Hollin

By trade, I'm a backend-focused developer working mostly with PHP, MariaDB, and Docker. In practice, I spend a lot of my time solving problems that sit just beneath the surface — untangling messy data, improving performance bottlenecks, and designing systems that don't fall over when they're put under real-world pressure.

I'm particularly interested in the shape of data and how it moves through a system. Whether it's normalising inconsistent inputs, building search pipelines that return results in milliseconds, or restructuring queries to scale from dozens to thousands of records, I enjoy finding the cleanest and most efficient path from A to B.

How I Think

Do it once, do it properly

If something can be solved at the data or architecture level, that's usually where I'll go first.

Performance is a feature

Fast systems feel better to use, are cheaper to run, and are easier to reason about.

Prefer clarity over cleverness

I'd rather write something obvious and robust than something “smart” that becomes fragile later.

Work with the grain

Databases are good at sets, so let them handle sets. Avoid fighting the tools.

What I Enjoy Working On

Designing scalable data pipelines and search systems
Optimising slow queries into something near-instant
Refactoring legacy code into something maintainable (without breaking everything)
Building internal tools that make other developers' lives easier
Finding and fixing those subtle edge cases that only show up in production

Beyond the Backend

I'm not a “design-first” developer, but I do care about how things feel to use. Small details — like how a table behaves, how feedback is presented, or how a UI responds under load — matter more than they might seem. Good UX isn't just visual; it's about predictability and responsiveness.

In my spare time I build native macOS utilities in Swift and SwiftUI, and recreate classic arcade games as single-file browser experiences. That's what this site is about — the things I make for the fun of making them.

A Bit More Personally

I like systems that behave predictably, code that explains itself, and solutions that scale without drama. I'm naturally detail-oriented, sometimes to a fault, but that tends to pay off when it comes to building things that last.

I also enjoy helping others figure things out — whether that's unblocking a tricky problem or just making something a bit clearer than it was before.

Based on the Isle of Man.

In Short

I build things that work, keep working, and work well — even when they're pushed a bit harder than expected.

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