Hello, I'm Darren — nice to meet you!
About Me
I'm a hands-on builder who taught myself to code by creating real projects—not just tutorials. Over the past two decades, I've built everything from trading tools and desktop apps to Unity games and custom websites, driven by passion and curiosity. I approach every project as a challenge: break it apart, see how it ticks, then program the optimal solution. What drives me is the thrill of mastering new technologies to solve complex problems - whether that's optimizing trading systems, streamlining data workflows, or building open source solutions. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with AI’s potential to revolutionize how we build, iterate, and scale. I thrive in fast-paced environments where new ideas are tested quickly, refined intelligently, and built to last.
FTML - FlexTag Markup Language
I created my own markup language and published it as a Python package on PyPI. I've always wanted a markup format that felt intuitive but still offered real power—where the schema is clear at a glance and the syntax is easy to write.
Project Highlights
- Flawless round-trip preservation of comments and docstrings
- Clean, mirrored syntax for both data and schema — readable, writable, and intuitive
- Built-in support for constraints, defaults, enums, and type safety
- Fast, custom parser and validator built from scratch in Python
- Converts seamlessly to and from Python dictionaries
- Designed for next-gen AI workflows and human editing — no boilerplate, no fuss
FTML Example
// Hover or tap on schema keys and types for details name: str version: float | null theme: [str] parameters: { temp: float, max_size: int = 512, }
// Hover or tap on data keys and types for details name = "model-alpha" version = 1.2 theme = ["Light", "Dark"] parameters = { temp = 0.8, max_size = 1024, }
Project Timeline
I built FTML in 8 weeks of my spare time — fueled by caffeine and late-night breakthroughs. By combining my programming expertise with cutting-edge LLM tooling, I accelerated the development process without sacrificing quality or attention to detail.
Status & Roadmap
Currently, in the early alpha stage with a solid foundation in place. This initial release establishes the groundwork for further expansion. Future versions will introduce richer validation rules, syntax refinement, and expanded ecosystem tools as we gather real-world usage insights.
Enterprise Data Recovery Pipeline
When a corporate client faced a critical data migration crisis with 70,000+ records stranded between legacy and modern systems, I engineered a comprehensive recovery solution that transformed years of corrupted operational data into an accessible digital archive. This project showcased advanced data engineering techniques, combining binary stream processing with custom parsing algorithms to rescue data that both database vendors deemed "unrecoverable."
Project Highlights
- 18+ Jupyter notebooks for data exploration and preprocessing
- 25+ custom Python scripts forming a resilient fault-tolerant processing pipeline
- Discovered 15+ distinct data corruption patterns
- Streamed mixed-encoding byte data (CP-1252 & UTF-8) for input normalization
- Resolved 60,000+ character-level encoding errors during conversion to UTF-8
- Repaired 250,000+ malformed records by reengineering 750 original templates to correct systemic digitization errors
- Generated 70,000+ PDFs using Python multiprocessing and custom layout rules
- Delivered a portable desktop app with embedded search and metadata filters
- End-to-end validation logging to ensure recoverability and integrity
Business Impact
This solution eliminated redundant legacy API licensing costs and mitigated regulatory compliance risks caused by inaccessible records. By placing the portable application on the organization's private shared drive, it enabled instant access to historical maintenance data across the entire organization, with no technical expertise required from end users.
Project Timeline
Delivered in 8 weeks under a hard legacy shutdown deadline—while juggling a full-time job. Pulled late nights (and the occasional all-nighter) to restore critical records and avoid compliance risks tied to inaccessible data.
Gallery
FTML Studio - Visual Markup Editor
I built a modern GUI tool for working with the FTML markup language. FTML Studio provides a visual environment for developers to create, edit, and validate FTML documents with real-time feedback and intuitive editing tools.
Project Highlights
- Intuitive code editing environment for FTML
- Real-time validation and error reporting
- Custom syntax highlighting for FTML and all major markup languages
- Import and Export FTML files
- Convert to and from JSON/YAML/TOML/XML formats
- Theme support with light and dark modes
Development Process
I designed and built FTML Studio in just one week, in my free time. I am using Python with the PySide6 framework for the UI components, Poetry to handle dependency management, making the development workflow smooth in the early alpha phase.
Status & Updates
FTML Studio is currently in the alpha stage. The editor, format converter, and core functionality are working well, with custom syntax highlighting for data major markup languages.
Todo: Set up GitHub Actions for CI/CD, add syntax highlighting for schema, build desktop installers, and sign code.
Gallery
Game Development Portfolio
Over the past two decades I taught myself to program by building scores of Unity games and prototypes—driven by pure curiosity and a love for how games tick. That obsession pulled me deep into clean-code principles, object-oriented design, and performance tuning. It gave me a rock-solid grasp of programming fundamentals.
Portfolio Showcase
A collection of Unity games and prototypes that shaped my development journey.
Custom Portfolio Website
I built the WordPress theme for darrenhaba.com entirely from scratch using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP—no frameworks. The design leans into a programming aesthetic, with animated console-style prompts (>>>) that cycle through roles. It also features interactive FTML schema/data highlighting, responsive layouts, and click-to-zoom image galleries—all coded to give the user experience I had in mind.
Technical Journey
My web dev journey started with raw HTML and table-based layouts. Then came the buzzwords: AJAX, mobile web, responsive, mobile-first. I built sites with PHP, CSS, JavaScript, a bit of Flash, and even ActionScript—until Steve Jobs declared it dead. Eventually, I found my rhythm with WordPress.
Along the way, I picked up the full stack of launch skills: domain setup, DNS config, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, server management, Linux environments, and Docker. I’ve built sites end-to-end—for myself and for others.