About Me

(in about 1284 words)

Intro

I am Amine, a professional and independent self-motivated Software Developer. I have a passion for building things, and a drive for constant improvement and learning. My passion has taken me towards a more research focused setting for the last couple of years, but now that my thesis is over, I think I will put my PhD on the back burner and get back into pure software development, to the pressure of the deadlines and the awesome people that you can only meet in tech.
I added this page because so many people complained that my site was just a resume!

Currently

I have just graduated with honors from a Master's degree at Concordia Univeristy where I worked on creating tools and logics for model checking Multi-Agent Systems (MASs), under the supervision of Dr. Bentahar. In addition to research, the biggest part of my work has been as a java developer, creating tools for model checking MASs or working on model-based automatic test generation.

I am currently looking for a position as a Back-end Developer. I am particularly interested in a position as a Java Developer in the Montreal area, but I'm open to a position anywhere in Canada really as long as the project and team are a good fit for me.

I am also available to consult on interesting projects. I am particularly interested in education, avionics systems, and finance. I may even be available for pro-bono work depending on the project and the time commitment. If you would like to arrange a meeting, I am based in Montreal but travel to Morocco (my home country) frequently.

Some history

  • At 6, I used a computer for the first time. I played superfrog, and I was hooked forever.

  • At 7, I finished my first game prince of persia (1989) while at summer camp.

  • At 8, I couldn't sleep all night after I played Resident Evil, my first ever horror game.

  • At 9, I learned chess from my cousin. It went on to become one of my favorite hobbies.

  • At 10, we bought our first computer, a Dell Pentium III at the time.

  • At 11, I got a pink floppy disk as a gift, and won my first and last school soccer tournament. Best year of my life.

  • At 12, I set the all-time high record at my local video-game facility by beating King of Fighter 97 in record time using only Chris.

  • At 13, I wrote my first calculator in pascal.

  • At 14, I participated in my first local olympiad of mathematics, I went on to the regionals the year after and met some friends for life.

  • 14 - 17, I played a lot of video games. My favorites included Prince of Persia, Resident Evil 4, the Commandos series, Wolfenstein, and Age of Empires 2.

  • At 15, I got accepted into a high-school for gifted children and left home for good. I met some people that inspired my entire life since.

  • At 16, I learned HTML and CSS, and created a few websites and animations for fun.

  • At 18, I failed to make the Moroccan team for the International Mathematical Olympiad, my first ever heartbreak.

  • At 19, I learned the C language, and later went on to learn c++. I created my first 2D games (Tank) a year later.

  • At 20, I learned Java and Neural Networks. I created my first GUI tool to predict the weather using Neural Networks and supervised learning. This went on to become my project for TIPE on my final year in preparatory classes.

  • At 21, after failing Concours Centrale-Supelec, I decided to go to join INPT instead of going to finish my studies in France.

  • At 22, I joined my first programming club, participated in my first competitive programming marathon, and first competitive programming local contest.

  • At 22, I also became interested in research, and went on to have my first summer internship in a research setting. I worked on WebRTC back before any books were published on the subject, and browsers hadn't even agreed on a single API. I used WebRTC and NodeJs to create a video conferencing app at the time.

  • 22 - 24, I learned about software development, took university courses in C, C++, Java, Assembly, JEE and Spring. I become passionate about programming, and decided to pursue it as a career.

  • At 23, I became the president of our university's programming club, joined the student association as the head of the Student Life and Culture committee, and became student representative in the university council. Our team also won third place at the Moroccan Collegiate Programming Contest, and qualified to represent Morocco in the Africa and Arab Collegiate Programming Contest. We couldn't make it to Egypt though because of funding problems.

  • At 24, our team won 2nd place in the Moroccan Collegiate Programming Contest, but couldn't make it to the AACPC again because of the instability in the region back in the arab spring. We were heartbroken especially since the ICPC finals were organized in Morocco.

  • That same year, I also became interested in formal verification in general, and model checking specifically. I ended up with a research internship in Canada working on MASs a year later, published my first research paper, and joined a Master's degree under the same supervisor a year later. The rest is history as they say.

You can ask me in person for other stories that I'm afraid to share with the internet.



I like

Travel / Geography

  • I am originally from M'rirt, Morocco. I have since lived in Khenifra, Meknes, Rabat and Montreal.

  • I have been to ~ 10 countries, many of which I'd like to revisit.

  • In 2012, I visited: France, Belgium, Japan.

  • In 2014, I visited France, Spain, Monaco.

  • In 2015, I visited Canada, Italy.

  • In 2016, I visited Spain.

  • In 2019, I visited Poland, and the Czech republic.

  • In 2020, before COVID-19, I was supposed to go back to Japan, to Yokohama to attend IJCAI-PRICAI 2020.

  • I am working on getting back to shape, through hiking and gym mostly, all around montreal.

Fun facts

  • I'm an Amazigh (ⵉⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵏ,). I can't speak the language very well, but I can understand it fine. I plan on mastering it fully though.

  • I'm a big soccer fan, since I was 7, with the scars and the memories to prove it.

  • I'm a big reader of translated chinese Light Novels, especially on Wuxiaworld. Desolate Era and ISSTH are some of my favorites.

  • My favorite book series is Ender’s Saga by Orson Scott Card. Even though Harry Potter has a special place in my heart.

  • I sketch when I'm really bored, you can find some that I've published over the years in my fb account.

  • I've been trying to learn German for a couple of years now, I just can't seem to advance without someone to practice with. And a trip to Germany isn't in the cards yet.

  • I can't locate every country on a map.

  • I'm always looking for a motivated team to train for the MCPC, ACPC or ICPC even. I will never forget what the community gave me, and I always promised myself to give back once I can.

  • I always have a few linux distributions that I'm testing in addition to the usual ones. I have a favorite one for every task, and I'm always looking for the next one. Feel free to suggest any you like, I'll give it a try.

I dream of

  • always finding inspiration.
  • making a difference.
  • enabling a brighter future.
  • doing better.
  • no one checking my commit history for early drafts of this file.