Available for Summer 2027 SWE Internships Berkeley, CA · Texas Tech University

I write software where the details matter

Distributed Systems Full-Stack Platforms Compiler Engineering

Systems-focused software engineer building distributed systems, full-stack platforms, and compiler tooling. Currently pursuing an accelerated B.S./M.S. in Computer Science at Texas Tech University — developing multiplayer infrastructure, real-time web applications, and programming language technology.

See selected work Resume GitHub
Program
Accel. BS/MSTexas Tech · CS
GPA
3.56/ 4.00 · Math minor
Seeking
Summer '27SWE internship
Local time
—Berkeley, CA
~/ — shell

Or just shell in.

A real REPL — not a video, not a screenshot. Try help, ls projects/, or cat projects/reallang.md. Press ` anywhere to focus.

nicholas@portfolio: ~
02 — Impact

The 20-second version.

Four different kinds of engineering proof — infrastructure, real-time backend, full-stack product, and compilers. Full architecture lives in each case study.

RealFiction

Infrastructure
  • Operated cloud-hosted multiplayer infrastructure on Oracle Cloud (OCI)
  • Administered multiple Ubuntu Linux servers in production
  • Debugged and tuned live, user-facing distributed systems

HeartHaven

Real-time platform
  • Real-time multiplayer state synchronization
  • Persistent world state with authentication
  • Row-level-secured PostgreSQL architecture

UnitedExams

Full-stack
  • Full-stack educational platform
  • Authentication and per-user authorization (RLS)
  • Adaptive practice and progress tracking

RealLang

Compiler
  • Recursive-descent parser and AST
  • Structured, repairable diagnostics engine
  • C-backed code generation
03 — Projects

Everything else worth showing.

Filter by area or search across titles, stacks, and bullets.

RealFiction Live

2023 → live

Distributed game-server platform on Oracle Cloud / Ubuntu. Velocity proxy, authoritative Java game nodes, MariaDB + Redis — architected, deployed, and operated end to end.

  • Multi-node architecture: custom backend services, persistent player data, live debugging.
  • Networking, deployment pipelines, monitoring, JVM tuning, runtime optimization.
  • Performance and responsiveness treated as operational priorities.
Java Distributed Systems OCI Ubuntu JVM tuning
Website ↗

HeartHaven In Dev

2025 → in development

A real-time multiplayer web platform — companion system, room decorating, and gardening — rendered with Phaser and synchronized live over a row-level-secured Postgres.

  • Optimistic updates reconciled against authoritative Postgres; presence + broadcast sync.
  • Typed bridge between Phaser's render loop and React/Next — one direction of truth.
  • Row-Level Security enforces per-user access at the database.
Next.js TypeScript Phaser Supabase PostgreSQL RLS
GitHub ↗

RealLang R&D

2025 → research

An AI-native programming language: deterministic syntax, structured repairable diagnostics, and C-backed execution. Compiler engineering meets LLM-reliability research.

  • Deterministic syntax + canonical formatter to make model generation repeatable.
  • Repairable diagnostics: errors are structured records with machine-applicable fixes.
  • Recursive-descent front end lowering to C for native performance.
Rust C backend Compiler design Parsing LLM reliability
GitHub ↗

RealForge Workbench Active

2025 → active

Local-first desktop app for AI-assisted engineering: a React / Tauri UI over a Python CLI backend, with safe dry-run previews, local provider diagnostics, and explicit approval gates that keep AI output inspectable.

  • Bounded, session-only chat with no automatic file, tool, or workspace access.
  • Safe Preview dry-run planning — no commands run, no files modified.
  • Privacy by construction: no secrets, paths, or model names in tracked files.
React TypeScript Tauri Python Local AI Security
GitHub ↗

UnitedExams

2025

Full-stack educational platform: adaptive practice, course organization, accounts, and progress tracking on a secure, row-level-secured backend.

  • Adaptive selection chooses the next item from weak areas by per-topic mastery.
  • Supabase Auth + protected routes; RLS enforces per-user data ownership.
  • Schema, policies, and migrations versioned together.
Next.js TypeScript Supabase PostgreSQL RLS
GitHub ↗

Rust Runtime Tooling Active

2024 → active

Rust runtime and tooling work for a public, non-commercial modding project — memory safety, explicit failure handling, and maintainable runtime boundaries.

  • Debugged complex runtime behavior: concurrent execution, systems-level resource management.
  • Memory safety and runtime correctness as preconditions, not features.
  • Fails loudly in development, degrades gracefully for users — compatibility as a design goal.
Rust Memory safety Concurrency Low-level
GitHub ↗

Imagicast Studios Active

2021 → present

Co-founded a game studio; lead engine-level systems across two titles — Abandoned Horror (6v1v1 multiplayer horror) and Heroic Submission.

  • Core systems architecture from initial design through production deployment.
  • State management, input handling, runtime multiplayer logic in Unreal Engine 4/5.
  • Git-based distributed workflows; correctness, maintainability, and delivery in balance.
Unreal Engine 4/5 C++ C# Multiplayer
Profile ↗

RealChat

2023

Python OCR desktop automation assistant designed to remain predictable under noisy text, inconsistent UI layouts, and OS-level interaction.

  • OCR noise filtering and tolerant parsing across shifting screen layouts.
  • Guarded input dispatch — automation validates before it acts.
  • macOS packaging with encrypted local config and license/config validation.
Python OCR Event-Driven Automation macOS
GitHub ↗

Interactive Portfolio Shell

2026

This site. Hand-written HTML / CSS / JS with an interactive terminal-style REPL, command history, theme toggle, project search, and accessible mobile nav — no frameworks.

  • Real REPL with virtual filesystem (cat projects/reallang.md).
  • Command palette (⌘K), keyboard shortcuts, view transitions, live local time, real web vitals.
  • Deployed via GitHub Pages with Cloudflare-managed custom domain.
HTML CSS JavaScript A11y GitHub Pages Cloudflare
Try the shell ↓ Source ↗

Low-level CS & Systems

Ongoing

Texas Tech CS coursework: Computer Architecture, Theory of Automata, Software Engineering, Data Structures & Algorithms, Systems & Assembly, and graduate-level work via the accelerated BS/MS program.

  • x64 Assembly + architecture: registers, memory, calling conventions, instruction-level behavior.
  • C / C++ systems study: pointers, memory layout, compilation, OS fundamentals.
  • Theory: grammars, automata, recursive descent, shift-reduce, analysis of algorithms.
C x64 Assembly Architecture Automata Algorithms Math minor
Profile ↗
04 — Principles

Six opinions, earned the hard way.

Whatever a recruiter remembers about me, I'd rather it be these than a buzzword cloud.

  1. 01

    Tail latency, not mean.

    "Average response time looks fine" is the most expensive sentence in production. The user feels p99, not p50. If your p99 is broken, your service is broken — the rest of the histogram is just decoration.

  2. 02

    Rust over C++ when getting it wrong can hurt someone else's machine.

    Memory safety isn't a "feature" when your code runs close to a host process for a public community. That's why my runtime tooling is Rust — the type system pays for itself in tooling that has to run unsupervised.

  3. 03

    Region-safe, not threadsafe-by-luck.

    "It's been fine for six months" is a coin landing heads. Folia made me write code that's correct because the model says so, not because the test happened to pass. That habit transfers everywhere.

  4. 04

    Read the source before guessing the bug.

    Stack Overflow is a starting point; the runtime's source is where the answer actually lives. Five extra minutes in grep beats two days arguing with intuition.

  5. 05

    Ship behind a known-good baseline.

    Production is sacred. Every change should be reversible in one command, and every release should compare cleanly against a baseline you trust. If you can't roll back, you can't ship fast.

  6. 06

    Tooling is product.

    The CLI you build for yourself sets the velocity for everything else. Five hours invested in good tooling pays back the rest of the project — and beats heroics later.

05 — About

A short version, no buzzwords.

I'm a systems-focused engineer drawn to the layer where the abstraction breaks. In the last year I've built and operated a distributed multiplayer backend on Oracle Cloud (RealFiction), a real-time multiplayer web platform (HeartHaven), and an AI-native programming language with its own compiler (RealLang) — distributed systems, full-stack platforms, and compiler engineering, side by side.

I started early: I co-founded Imagicast Studios in 2021 and have shipped engine-level systems in Unreal Engine 4/5 ever since — state management, input handling, runtime multiplayer logic — which is where I learned what production actually costs. Now I'm at Texas Tech on an accelerated B.S./M.S. track (B.S. May 2027, Math minor, GPA 3.56), taking graduate coursework as an undergrad.

I'm looking for a Summer 2027 SWE internship on a team that ships real systems and trusts new engineers with hard problems.

Live · github

Recent activity

less more
    fetching from api.github.com/users/nicholaslasagna… github.com/nicholaslasagna ↗
    06 — Stack

    What I actually reach for.

    Honest stack — listed by what I've shipped with, not what I've heard of.

    Languages
    • Pythonautomation, OCR
    • Javabackends, JVM tuning
    • Rustruntime, tooling
    • C++ / CUE5, low-level
    • C#UE / Unity
    • x64 Assemblyarchitecture coursework
    • JavaScript / TSNext.js, web
    • SQL · HTML/CSSschema, RLS · structure
    Infrastructure & cloud
    • Linux (Ubuntu)daily driver, prod
    • Oracle Cloud (OCI)RealFiction host
    • Dockerisolation, deploy
    • Gitdistributed workflow
    • REST APIs · CI/CDdesign, pipelines
    • CloudflareDNS, edge
    Systems · backend · compilers
    • Distributed Systemsmulti-node, real-time
    • Runtime DebuggingJVM tuning, monitoring
    • PostgreSQL · Supabaseschema, RLS, realtime
    • Compiler designRealLang · parsing · codegen
    • Memory safetyRust runtime tooling
    • REST / API designauth, RLS boundaries
    Frameworks & engines
    • React · TauriRealForge desktop app
    • Next.jsHeartHaven · UnitedExams
    • Phaserbrowser game runtime
    • Unreal Engine 4/5Imagicast titles
    • Velocity · FoliaJVM proxies, region-threaded
    • Unity · Blenderprototyping · assets
    07 — Contact

    Email is the fastest path.

    Internship leads, code review, or just hello — I read everything.