Building Rachel: A Phoenix LiveView Card Game - Part 1
How I turned a 30-year-old family card game into a modern web application using Phoenix LiveView, complete with AI opponents and real-time multiplayer.
Steve Hill
Software Engineer. Storyteller. Explorer.
Recent Posts
View all posts →Sustainable Software
Sustainable software development isn’t just about clean code or green energy. It’s about people, pace, and pragmatic decisions that last.
Microservices, and why they're not always the answer
Microservices were supposed to save us. For most teams, they just moved the pain around — and made everything more complicated in the process.
Projects
View all projects →Bitshelf - ROM Collection Manager
A modern macOS ROM organizer with TOSEC/MAME support, archive handling, and emulator integration for retrogaming collections
Code Like It's 198x
An ambitious retro programming education platform teaching vintage computer assembly programming through hands-on lessons and authentic development environments.
Jackpoint - Premium Virtual Tabletop
A Phoenix LiveView VTT platform for Shadowrun 6th Edition with full rules automation, investigation mechanics, and global campaign support
NetNodes Platform Development
Freelance full-stack development for a multi-service access control platform, leading infrastructure migrations and enterprise-grade Rails development.
Open Source Contributions
Contributions to Ruby on Rails, TimescaleDB Ruby gem, and HTML Pipeline, focusing on database schema handling, MySQL compatibility, and text processing.
PuTTY Themer
A Ruby script that applies Solarized Dark theme and Fira Mono font to all PuTTY sessions via Windows Registry automation.
Rachel - Strategic Card Game
A Phoenix LiveView implementation of a beloved family card game with AI opponents, real-time multiplayer, and beautiful animations
remark-shiki-highlight-api
Remark plugin for high-performance syntax highlighting in Markdown using the CSS Highlights API with Shiki
Retro
A real-time retrospective tool for agile teams built with Phoenix LiveView, featuring vote-based prioritization, moderation tools, and comprehensive email workflows.
RSpec GitHub Actions Formatter
A custom RSpec formatter designed for GitHub Actions that provides proper test annotations and solves streaming output issues in CI environments.
Shelved - Media Collection Tracker
A privacy-focused Rails app with Hotwire Native mobile apps for tracking books, movies, and TV shows with physical location awareness
shiki-highlight-api
High-performance syntax highlighting using the CSS Highlights API instead of span elements, dramatically improving rendering performance
Space Shooter
A simple space shooter game developed in Unity.