About me.

Hi there 👋, I’m Haejoon Choi, a passionate software developer originally from Korea 🇰🇷, now living in the Greater Vancouver area of Canada 🇨🇦 with my wife.

My Journey

After completing my Master’s degree in Korea, I moved to Canada to pursue my dream of becoming a software developer by enrolling in BCIT’s notoriously intensive Computer Systems Technology diploma program, which compresses a typically four-year computer science program into two years. All in all, I was really busy during those two years but loved every moment of the journey.

I joined Ansys after graduating, which was my ideal place to work since I had worked with simulation programs extensively during my mechanical engineering studies (B.S. and M.S.), and I knew Ansys as the holy grail of simulation companies. I have been working on the Electronics Desktop Core team since then.

I mostly work with C++ and MFC programming for usual development work, but I recently got an opportunity to work with Large Language Models as well. I went to Zurich to get together with Ansys developers from all over the world, and had a blast developing something new with LLM for a week. I’ve been working on the research project since then, and I’ve got hands-on experience with Golang, vector database, and graph database in the course of my job, and that’s probably one of the most exciting parts of it.

Interests and hobbies

I have many interests in diverse technologies including 3D printing, NAS (Network Attached Storage), and making use of LLMs (for example, I tried setting up a personal ChatGPT bot for Telegram on my NAS; also, I tried using LLM for translating movies and creating subtitles for me). I plan to share some of my experiences like those here.

From time to time, I enter an “era” fixating on a new hobby. I’ve played chess for a while (it’s more like an on-and-off thing that I’ve never really quit). I’m having this love-hate relationship with 3D printing due to my fragile Ender 3 V2 3D printer. Recently, I experienced a short-lived obsession with learning everything about Canada thanks to my Canadian citizenship test. Last but not least, I started kickboxing about two months ago, and it’s been amazing!

Coffee Passion

The title for “the longest and deepest obsession” should probably be granted to coffee for me. Since tasting the best coffee of my life at GPO restaurant in Sydney (which sadly has now closed), I’ve always had this enduring love for coffee. As a true coffee connoisseur, I practice brewing coffee both at home and our office. I usually buy a new bag of coffee every other week, and try to get it from a place I haven’t tried before. At home, I have an espresso setup with Breville Bambino Plus along with an Opus grinder; at the office, I cherish using my old and beloved Hario V60 along with TIMEMORE Chestnut C2 manual grinder. I love making coffee for coworkers so you can often catch me making multiple cups for myself and coworkers ☺️.

Personal Philosophy

After spending numerous hours on TED Talks, self-help books, and maybe Huberman podcasts 😁 , my values and philosophy about life have formed. Probably at the core of my approach to life is the “growth mindset”. I have many innate talents but also maybe some parts I had to put more effort to develop. I’ve been pretty good at math, logic, and science since I was young, but I was also easily scared, lanky and lacking discipline. One thing that I have always believed throughout my rocky adolescent years was that “you can always change yourself in the way you want”. I’ve always believed that if I try hard enough until something works—and never give up—I can make myself braver, stronger, and more diligent. I’ve overcome my fear of ghosts (which gave me many sleepless nights—do you know the movie The Ring?), conquered my fear of heights (which used to freeze me every time I’d go to an amusement park), and improved physically (enough to go start kickboxing, you know? 😁).

Professional Development

Professionally, I really enjoy C++ programming even though it often feels really complex and puzzling; it feels like “I’m connected to the core of computing”, because of all the freedom it provides (like direct access to memory addresses, and memory management). That honestly kind of makes me like the person from Kayak’s ad here 😂.

Although I’m far from mastering C++ programming at this point in time; I’m diligently learning it through taking some LinkedIn Learning courses these days (You can always change yourself, remember?). I’ll feel truly accomplished and “freed” when I’m finally able to express my thoughts and ideas using this language.

You

At this point, I hope you are intrigued about me and eager to connect with me. Please feel free to get in touch with me! I’d love to have coffee chats with like-minded people anytime (virtually or otherwise). Cheers!

Haejoon, on Aug 17th, 2024 🌞