About

Click here for my professional CV.

Hello. I’m Borislav Stanimirov and I’m a programmer from Bulgaria.

This is a website and blog which I’ll use to collect my existing writings and share interesting new things that I learn.

I’m mainly a C++ programmer but I enjoy learning new langauges. I have written a lot of Ruby and I like playing with Nim, D, lua, MoonScript, TypeScript, Haskell, Lisp, Mathematica, and many more. Some programming languages I just dislike. These include Java, perl, PHP, Pascal, and Basic.

Most of my professional career has been in game development and most of that in startups. Sadly none of them were succcessful.

I started working as a programmer professionally at 18 in 2002, right after high-school. In 2006 I joined a newly formed startup to work on a MMORPG and that’s how my career in gamedev started. In 2012 I started working primarily on mobile games. In late 2018, after working for a total of five failed startups and two regular game development companies, I left the game industry. I’m now working on medical software. Curiously enough, it’s not that different from game development.

I still enjoy playing games. And not just video games. There are many card, board and party games that I like, bridge taking lead there. I’ve been playing bridge recreationally since 1999.

Some other preferences and opinions I have:

  • OS: I use Windows and Linux (I use Arch, btw) equally. I’m not a big fan of Apple, but I am eyeing Asahi Linux, and it may yet convert me to a MacBook at least.
  • Editor/IDE: I prefer Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, and SciTE. I’ve never did become a fan of vim. In vim I can do basic editing, but it’s not my editor of choice. For more serous text editing in a terminal-only enviroment I use micro.
  • Version Control: I prefer git or Mercurial. I’ve grown to dislike SVN, CVS, and anything not distributed. On a side note, I prefer Mercurial to git, but it has become so niche that I haven’t actually used hg for years.
  • C++ standard: Modern. I write mostly in C++17 in order to support toolchains that are a bit behind, but I use C++20 when I can.
  • C++ build toolset: I’ve been using CMake occasionally since 2010 and exclusively since 2012. I used to like premake, but due to lack of features, I completely abandoned it 2012.
  • Open-source licenses: I mostly use MIT and CC-By. I’m not a fan of copyleft licenses and I try to avoid them.
  • Bridge bidding system: I play a modified version of Modern Acol with my regular partner. When paired with other people I usually use SAYC or Precision. I like Blue Club, but there are very few people that still play it. I find fourth major openers particularly appealing.
  • Video Games: Some of my favorites are BroodWar, TitanQuest, TLJ, NWN, Baldur’s Gate, and Pillars of Eternity.
  • Non-video Games: Besides bridge, I enjoy pen and paper RPGs, The Resistance, charades, and many more.
  • Fiction: I prefer sci-fi, but there are many other genres that I like. The Hyperion Cantos and the works of Stanislaw Lem are to list some of my all-time favourites.