Hi there, my name is Sam Cook. I'm a programmer, guitarist, recovering lawyer, former touring musician, husband, and father.

Programming

I'm the creator and maintainer of an open source, full-stack web framework called Hwy. It's written in TypeScript and built on top of Hono (core server framework) and HTMX (frontend library).

I currently work at a company called Gamma as their lead frontend engineer, where I do my best to promote simple solutions and web standards.

I've been building apps with JavaScript and React since 2019. I also did "soft" web development and design (HTML / CSS) going back to the late 2000s. This often involved setting up and customizing WordPress sites for freelance clients.

Law and Education

From 2013 to 2016, I attended the University of St. Thomas School of Law as a Presidential Scholar (full-tuition merit scholarship), and I ultimately graduated with summa cum laude honors (top 2% rank). I also served as a Senior Editor on the law journal, and I published a paper in the school's Journal of Law and Public Policy.

After passing the bar, I practiced law for a few years as an Associate at a Minneapolis-based law firm called Maslon. I also spent some time as corporate counsel in a then–Series C tech startup (mostly drafting and negotiating enterprise SaaS agreements).

Before law school, I earned a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, unofficially minoring in philosophy and business. Many of my undergrad credits were earned at my local community college, both during and after high school.

Although I'm not practicing anymore, I keep my law license active and take all required continuing education courses. Unless I've told you otherwise in writing, I'm not your lawyer.

Music and Audio Engineering

Before undergrad, I toured the USA as a guitarist in an indie rock band. We had some mild successes, including having many of our songs featured on TV shows like Keeping Up With the Kardashians, The Real World, and Teen Mom 3.

I also did freelance work as an audio mixing engineer for a few years, which was super fun and rewarding.

I still love playing electric guitar and do it all the time (mostly unplugged while I'm reading or debugging, to help unlock a part of my brain only subprocess noodling can). I also love to record music, but unfortunately I don't have much time for that these days. Yet hope springs eternal.

Graphic and Web Design

Although I don't do it much anymore, I've done a lot of graphic and web design work over the years, including designing posters, corporate logos and stationary, presentational slides, t-shirts, and other stuff like that. Most of my freelance WordPress work also involved web design.

During undergrad, I worked part-time as the creative director of a large church youth group, which involved both print and digital design work, as well as video editing.

I've been using design tools like Illustrator and Photoshop (and their equivalents) since the early 2000s.

General

I have a beautiful wife and daughter who mean the world to me.

I love baseball, chess, fishing, and classic rock.

I have worked remotely for the majority of my career, and I have plenty of hot takes on the subject.

About This Site

This site is built with my framework, Hwy, and deployed to Cloudflare Pages. The source code is open source, MIT Licensed, and hosted on GitHub.