Simply put, I got annoyed at how simple certain apps were, yet how complicated it was to implement them. Surely, in a world where abstractions and interfaces serve to reduce complexity, there was a way to make simple what in essence was simple. I sought a way to achieve this, and the answer I came up with was interactive programming. Entire apps were reduced to lines of code in the single digits. At last I had a way to automate all the trivial tasks that were required of me, that I wasn’t allowed to automate on my previous devices, since commands were hidden behind apps and guis. I started automating what I never thought I could automate, what I never thought to automate. For the first time, I felt empowered by my devices. I felt powerful. It was as if I had my own secretary. I could finally focus on more complicated thoughts, ideas, designs, new things, and do away with the tedium.

My job is software engineering. I’ll take extra care in figuring out what I do next, regarding career, extra care in making sure I’ll be able to support myself and maybe one day a family, living comfortably. Anything that isn’t guaranteed to satisfy those constraints is necessarily a hobby. Who knows where these paths will lead me, only time will tell.

I’ll work backwards from the ideal developer experience, and try to answer the questions: can it be done? And if so, how? I’ll iterate and iterate, redesigning and redesigning as needed.

Take large software projects that I’ve written, and ask the question: is it beautiful? How would I express this in its most simple form? How would I specify this functionality most simply & easily? This may very well be a matter of writing libraries, and not so much a new programming language, but I can’t help but think that the bounds between OS & databases & networks might need rethinking. Perhaps not, we’ll see.