About — Alberto Vasquez

I’m originally from Orlando, Florida, and I’ve spent more than 20 years building software, businesses, and the occasional thing that probably sounded like a bad idea at first.

I’ve worked on everything from military simulators and criminal justice systems to hospital software, public radio, real estate platforms, and poker applications. Somewhere along the way, I built a software company, grew it to around 22,000 customers, then sold it.

These days, I’m particularly interested in AI and what happens when you give experienced engineers tools that can do more than autocomplete their code.

But that’s only part of the story.

From jumping out of airplanes to debugging software

Before becoming a software engineer, I was a Sergeant in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.

Yes, I voluntarily jumped out of perfectly good airplanes.

The Army taught me discipline, preparation, leadership, and how to remain calm when things aren’t going according to plan. All surprisingly useful skills in software development, especially the last one.

After the Army, I studied Computer Science at the University of Central Florida and started what would become a pretty unusual engineering career.

I’ve helped build systems for police departments, Army personnel, and Navy submarine instructors. One of my favorite projects involved creating tools that allowed Navy subject matter experts to help build their own training simulators, rather than waiting for programmers to translate everything they knew into code.

We delivered the simulator, and the framework eventually became useful for building many more.

Looking back, that was probably my first real experience with the idea that drives much of my work with AI today: the best tools don’t replace experts. They let experts do things they couldn’t do before.

I accidentally became an entrepreneur. Then did it again.

For years, I built and ran ClientExec, billing software for web hosting companies.

It started as a software product and grew into a business serving around 22,000 customers. I wrote code, managed developers, gave demos, talked to customers, handled sales, and learned that running a software company involves a surprising amount of work that has nothing to do with software.

Eventually, I sold the business.

You’d think that would have cured me of entrepreneurship.

It did not.

I later started Bitlabs, where I continue experimenting with software products, communities, and ideas that don’t always fit neatly into a business plan.

One of those projects became Hash House, a community built around technology, events, entertainment, and competition.

We hosted developer meetups, live music nights, and eventually poker. Because apparently going from software development to running poker tournaments was a perfectly logical career progression.

From NPR’s Tiny Desk to Hash Nights

One of the more memorable chapters of my career was working at NPR.

I helped develop the first version of NPR One and worked on the technology powering NPR’s digital content.

But one of the perks had nothing to do with code.

I got to experience Tiny Desk concerts live and help with the Tiny Desk competition one year.

There’s something special about watching musicians perform a few feet away in what is essentially an office. It made me appreciate how technology, creativity, and community can come together in unexpected ways.

Years later, when we started hosting live music at Hash House through Hash Nights, it felt like a small continuation of that experience.

Different country. Different stage. Slightly different budget.

Same idea: bring people together around something worth experiencing.

Looking back, a lot of what I’ve built shares the same DNA: technology, entertainment, competition, and community.

Sometimes it’s software. Sometimes it’s live music. Sometimes it’s a poker tournament where everyone is convinced they played perfectly.

Building things for people who actually have to use them

I’ve spent much of my career working on fairly complicated software for organizations like General Dynamics, NPR, Hyundai, Cedars-Sinai, and Colliers.

The industries couldn’t be more different, but the problems often have something in common: the people using the software are trying to get their jobs done, and they really don’t care how clever the architecture is.

Nor should they.

One of my favorite projects at Colliers involved importing messy client spreadsheets into a real estate platform.

That might not sound exciting, but anyone who’s worked with enterprise spreadsheets knows they’re basically an archaeological dig with column headers.

I built a system that could recognize different layouts, map fields, explain uncertain matches, and remember how each client’s data was organized.

No AI involved. Just careful engineering.

Which brings me to something I believe strongly: not every problem needs AI, and not every interesting solution needs to be complicated.

Knowing the difference is part of the job.

Now I’m building with AI

A lot of my time these days goes into exploring how AI changes software development.

I use tools like Claude Code and Codex to help design, implement, research, test, and challenge ideas.

I’m particularly interested in what happens when experienced developers stop treating AI as fancy autocomplete and start treating it as a collaborator that needs direction, context, and occasionally a firm reminder that its brilliant idea doesn’t actually work.

I’m building a poker platform, working on a game theory optimal poker solver in Rust, and experimenting with ways AI agents can contribute to increasingly complex engineering work.

Some experiments work beautifully.

Others provide a very educational explanation of why I should have trusted the benchmark instead of the agent.

I write about both.

A little life outside the terminal

I’ve traveled extensively, lived in Egypt, and spent years between the United States and South America.

I have two daughters and a beautiful girlfriend, and family is the part of my life that matters most, even if software has a habit of trying to occupy every available hour.

Orlando is home, but South America has also become a big part of my life.

I enjoy music, technology, travel, poker, and bringing people together. Ideally, some combination of all five.

Why this website exists

I’ve been building software long enough to remember when we had to write practically everything ourselves.

Now we’re entering a period where the difficult part is increasingly less about typing code and more about knowing what to build, how to evaluate it, and whether the result actually solves the problem.

That’s fascinating to me.

This website is where I document what I’m building, what I’m learning, what works, and occasionally what goes spectacularly wrong.

No grand predictions about AI replacing everyone.

Just real projects, real experiments, and the perspective of someone who’s been jumping into complicated situations for most of his adult life.

Sometimes literally.

Welcome.

Hi, I'm Alberto.