A year of progress: AI agentic coding and the Cosmic Defender experiment
In March 2024 I tried to build a 3D space shooter game using AI in just a few prompts. It was a disaster. A year…
Developer Advocate · Automattic
Building for developers, teaching by example.
I’m Jonathan — a developer advocate, educator, and open-source enthusiast from Cape Town, South Africa. I create educational content for WordPress developers and write about software, AI, and life.
What I Do
Developer advocacy through content, code & community
Developer Advocacy
Working at Automattic across WordPress.com, WordPress VIP, and WordPress.org — bridging the gap between developers and the tools they use, with a growing focus on AI integration.
Education & Content
Creating tutorials, blog posts, video courses, and documentation that help developers learn WordPress development. Currently curating the WordPress.com Dev & Deploy newsletter.
Open Source & Tools
Building developer utilities like WP Debug and SQLite Viewer for Studio. Active WordPress contributor, community deputy, and WordCamp speaker across multiple continents.
Latest Writing
From the blog
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Globally ignore .DS_Store files in Git
If you’re a macOS developer working with Git, you’ve probably encountered .DS_Store files appearing in your commit history. These system files are created by macOS…
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Why I’ve settled on GitHub Copilot when building my personal projects
2025 was the year I tested every AI agent I could find and eventually settled back to using GitHub Copilot for building personal projects.
Experience
Where I’ve worked
2022 — Present
WordPress Developer Advocate
Automattic
Started as a sponsored contributor supporting WordPress Training and Learn WordPress. Now part of the Developer Relations team, splitting time between WordPress.com, WordPress VIP, and WordPress.org, with a focus on AI.
2021 — 2022
Senior Technical Writer
Delicious Brains
Combined a love of writing with software development experience to create developer education content. The role evolved from Developer Educator to Senior Technical Writer.
2017 — 2020
Development Lead
Castos
Led development of a podcast hosting platform powering the Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin. Grew the team from 2 to 12, serving over 20,000 podcasters and 10,000+ customers.
2016 — 2020
Expert Developer
Codeable
Solved technical problems for international clients, focusing on custom plugin development and theme customization.
2004 – 2016
PHP Developer/Senior PHP Developer/Team lead
Realmdigital, ZaPOP, Prezence, Crystal River
Experience across various PHP application stacks, including Laravel, Yii, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Moodle.
Community