About me

I’m Maryan Prydatko. I grew up in Ukraine, lived in England, and now live in Berlin. I study software engineering at CODE and work with React Native and React at Aether, building Hivemind and Brainjuice.

I’ve described myself as both lazy and persistent. I’ll automate a repeated task, but I also enjoy sitting down with a problem and solving it myself. I don’t want to lose that as I use agents more.

Coding, learning, and agents

Claude Code is a big part of my working day. I use agents for investigation, parallel work, implementation, review, and testing in browsers and simulators. I keep trying new tools and models, then ask what they actually improve.

I’m also skeptical of AI, and I really enjoy solving things myself. I want to keep learning to write code myself. When I use agents, I save useful tests, repository instructions, and skills so the next session can use what we already worked out.

Most of my app work is TypeScript, React Native, and React. I’m also learning C++, trying Rust from time to time, and running Linux to get more familiar with it. For my own tools I also use Python, or plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript when that is enough. I like software I can understand, change, and leave alone when it works. I wrote more about how I work with agents.

When I find a bug in a library I use, I try to fix it where it lives. Two of my fixes are merged into Software Mansion’s React Native libraries: inline code in enriched-markdown now scales with Dynamic Type on iOS, and react-native-streamdown no longer crashes on web when worklet runtimes are unavailable.

Bouldering, ballroom, and philosophy

I started bouldering about a year ago. There’s a problem in front of me, and I have to work out how to move through it. That appeals to the same part of me that enjoys coding. I’m still very much learning.

I started ballroom dancing when I was around six. I spent about ten years on it before a knee injury made me stop. I wrote about how much I practised, why I wanted to compete, and my parents’ support in The hours and the help.

I’m interested in philosophy, especially memory, identity, and what it means to have an experience. Thinking about Her is one way into those questions.

I also wrote two short pieces of fiction for college: two objects left in an empty house, or visitors arriving on Earth.

Maryan posing on a rock during a trip to Dresden — Dresden. I’d just started bouldering and asked my girlfriend to take a photo as if I knew what I was doing. Mostly posing.

Maryan ballroom dancing with a partner in a red dress — Ballroom, quite a few years ago.

Family, university, and an art exhibition

Sladent is my family’s dental clinic in Ternopil. I built its website with plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

A lot of my personal projects start this way: something close to me needs doing. University admin became a terminal tool. Tracking my hours became a calendar extension. I use both myself.

I also help organize HOME/HOMELAND, an international student art exhibition, and built its submission and gallery website. I also play guitar and enjoy films. Watching Good Will Hunting with my father became an essay about why the same work affects people differently.

C++ and a visit to CERN

In high school, I made a pathfinding visualizer in Java. More recently, I built an unofficial Qiskit study companion. Now I’m learning C++ for a student CubeSat (cube satellite). The hardware has just arrived.

These photos are from a visit to CERN: the Antimatter Factory and the first web server exhibit.

Maryan visiting CERN’s Antimatter Factory, with the experimental equipment behind him — Inside the Antimatter Factory, CERN.

A computer on display beneath a sign reading The world's first web server at CERN — The first web server exhibit at CERN.

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