I am actually enthusiastic about Darklang

2024-03-12 14:44:18

I have been engaged on Darklang for a bit over 2 years, and I am actually enthusiastic about it. I am posting this together with a status update that I wrote for the Darklang weblog. It is in all probability finest to learn that first, for context.

This publish is supposed to be much less formal – simply pondering out loud about one thing I am considering. In it, I:

I like software program

My earliest reminiscences of computer systems contain my dad – surrounded by displays, computer systems, and books, nerding out.

The story goes that in ~1998 after I was 6, the 2 of us had been residing in a trailer in central Pennsylvania, and he had simply gained some cash playing in Atlantic Metropolis. With that money, he instantly splurged it on all on that tools and books, got down to be taught as a lot as he may.

All through my life, I’ve seen him construct a powerful profession in software program and databases, rapidly transferring on up as he deliberately and joyously pursued that world, in its earlier days.

He had real ardour for all of it, and as I grew I gained that zeal as effectively. It usually appeared that his hobbies – computer systems, chemistry, woodworking, electronics, R/C autos, and so forth – had been the first supply of his pleasure, and he wasn’t positive what to make of the remaining. Whereas he wasn’t at all times ‘there’ to speak about life at massive, he would at all times be accessible for some software program BS chat. So, that is the place we aligned, and the place so a lot of our conversations went. Not less than we may at all times discuss software program.

I grew to like software program. I used it, wrote it in my spare time associated to hobbies, traded software program to skip quizzes and initiatives, bought USB sticks of software program to classmates in highschool, and so forth. It grew to become this natural ardour, a part of my life.

So, I obtained my first tech internship, doing internet dev for my college. After which moved on to work on a scheduling app someplace else, and HR/Payroll software program, and training software program, and ecomm software program, and so forth.

Together with the love of software program got here a rising connection between that world and my father. The 2 matters grew to become more and more entwined, and I might be excited to have one thing to speak to him about after a workday. “Oh, I have been engaged on this cool API that (blah blah),” or “ugh you must see this monstrosity of a saved process this fool at work wrote.”

In some unspecified time in the future, I assume doing software program for a day job wasn’t sufficient, and I began going to and talking at conferences and native person teams for enjoyable. My first time attending a significant convention was TechEd in New Orleans – my dad took me with him for my twenty first birthday. Anyway, every time I obtained considering varied technical issues, I signed myself as much as discuss them, and traveled as a lot as wanted simply to seek out of us who would hear. For some time, I critically entertained turning into a Microsoft “technical evangelist” or another type of developer advocacy.

I particularly cherished the F# group, hosted an F# podcast for some time, and ended up talking on the subject at fairly a couple of person teams, together with a couple of conferences. Throughout one in all my F# talks, I ended up assembly my now-wife, Olya – discuss a nerdy “meet cute.”

All that to say, my profession has at all times introduced me pleasure, and I’ve had extra “software program vitality,” bleeding till late hours within the night. “Software program nerd” was an enormous a part of my self-identity.

My dad died, and I burnt out

On the finish of 2018, my dad handed away, considerably instantly, considerably anticipated, positively tragically.

I used to be misplaced – I spent the following yr choosing up the items of a life, promoting his stuff, and scraping by at work (thanks, Locai, for supporting me throughout that point).

With that loss of life, my worldview of software program felt bizarre, as if 40% of my ‘software program mind’ had simply been deleted. The eagerness was gone, the work was slowed, I ended giving talks, and usually wasn’t positive if I even cared about software program. Possibly that sounds dramatic, however on the time it felt like a really actual wrestle and concern to me.

Or, perhaps I simply wanted a couple of years to cope with grief and logistics.

I first regarded into Darklang in Nov 2020

The Darklang workforce had just announced that they had been porting their backend from OCaml to F#, and as a fan of each, that basically caught my consideration – are they constructing a cloud-native “F#,” in F#?

Naturally, I posted it to my then-work Slack channel and began digging in.

I ended up taking part in with it for a bit, finding out its source, and imagining what it may be. For the primary time in a couple of years, some tech actually caught my consideration.

A number of months later, I requested Paul (the founder) if he’d be as much as file an episode of WTF#, which we recorded, however I by no means ended up publishing. (I felt like I did a nasty job within the interview, and could not salvage the recording…)

I continued to make use of Darklang the place I may, principally for passion initiatives, together with a couple of one-off makes use of at work.

Finally, although, my pleasure light a bit. As I felt a lot of Darklang’s limitations, it grew to become only a instrument I might use the place its ache factors weren’t too noticeable – after studying the place these had been.

I joined the Darklang workforce ~2 years in the past

Three years into that post-trauma melancholy, a yr after that preliminary Darklang nerd-out, I obtained an e-mail from Arc. It is a job board I had signed up for years prior, and this randomly confirmed up in my inbox:

This was a neat shock. On the time, I used to be nonetheless feeling fairly burnt out at work – earlier than my dad’s loss of life, I had set a tempo for myself, of how a lot software program I can produce. And since his loss of life, I felt so a lot slower at every part, like I could not examine to that ‘previous productiveness.’ So, a job hop was tempting – perhaps a change of surroundings would assist.

In any case, the job appeared actually fascinating. Cloud stuff, F# kinda language, written in F#/ReScript, absolutely distant, fairly async, Paul appeared cool, and I believed within the product.

So, I pinged Paul, utilized, and began porting Darklang’s HTTP Client functions from OCaml to F#, as an interview venture. A bit later, I formally left my job to work on Darklang.

It has been enjoyable

It has been a bit over 2 years since I joined Darklang full-time, and I’ve discovered quite a bit.

Engaged on dev instruments has allowed me to nerd out quite a bit

There are various issues I’ve discovered engaged on Darklang that I’ve had no expertise with earlier than: ReScript, OCaml, interpreters, parsers, WASM and Blazor, Figma, language server innards, writing VS Code extensions, a bunch of terminal/CLI stuff, GCP, terraform, and so forth.

I get to nerd out about software program day by day. Not simply software program – a programming language and setting, like those I’ve cherished earlier than, and I can level it within the instructions I choose.

Possibly I am feeling what each geek has felt after they wrote a programming language. However I feel there’s one thing particular right here.

In any case, I feel I’ve discovered extra about software program prior to now ~2 years than within the earlier a number of jobs.

As a software program nerd, I am actually excited by the product

I actively resent most issues between code and software program. I simply need to mannequin issues in code and stroll away, with out ready for compilations, dancing with git, or sitting round hoping CI does not fail.

Darklang solves for these issues and extra – no matter Darklang (the corporate)’s success, I plan to be a super-user of the product long-term, utilizing it for web sites, APIs, CLIs, and managing my life.

I like working within the open

All of our code and communications are within the open, in Discord and on GitHub.

I really feel like this gives a reasonably neat public strain. Even when nobody is wanting, I am going to really feel responsible if I take dangerous shortcuts in code, and this has led to me being extra disciplined than I would normally be.

As a pleasant bonus, if/when I’ve to search for a job subsequent, I can level to all of my Darklang PRs to offer a perspective on the work I can get finished.

As of two months in the past, I have been operating Darklang

At this level, the Darklang workforce consists of Paul (the founder), myself (Stachu), and Feriel. As of the beginning of the yr, Paul has stepped away to give attention to Tech for Palestine. Whereas targeted on TFP, he continues to behave as an advisor for Darklang as a lot as he has the capability for. Since that time, I’ve taken over relating to the day-to-day operations of Darklang, and steering the ship.

A number of days after Paul and I mentioned that transition, I set a couple of objectives to steer in the direction of, with a “two months in” checkpoint (that is now!) in thoughts.

I am fairly proud of the progress we have made on all of these objectives:

“Self-updating, downloadable exe on main platforms”
We have now shipped our CLI runtime’s “exe,” and it really works and self-updates effectively! That mentioned, we nonetheless should work by one subject associated to Mac help, and we have to briefly circle again to help Home windows.
“Weblog posts out” (…)
As of at present, I might depend that as successful!
“Notion -> Github and usually tidy product org”
We used to have greater than 200 unorganized GitHub points, and a large number of many paperwork in Notion. Tremendous unapproachable to anybody outdoors of our workforce. Now we’re at ~50 Issues, all of that are comparatively clear and approachable, and I am nonetheless slowly trimming down the mess in Notion.
“First rate expertise enhancing native .darkish scripts”
To this point the editor (VS Code extension) is fairly minimal, supporting syntax highlighting, primary diagnostics, and code execution. I would not say it is a “respectable” expertise but, but it surely needs to be in a couple of weeks.
“READMEs and such present an affordable on-ramp to contrib on darklang-next”
Till a month in the past, we hadn’t actually up to date our READMEs in any respect prior to now yr. I’ve made some good progress right here lately, however there’s nonetheless work to be finished to be extra accessible to contributors.

Most of my expertise has been strictly as a software program engineer, with out a lot of a voice when it comes to product route. Now, instantly, I’ve to optimize for one thing a bit totally different – I’ve to zoom out a bit, specializing in the entire product, its roadmap, and our customers. I have been having fun with it – in any case, spending the previous 2 months organizing work towards releasing these weblog posts has been enjoyable.

This is a peek into the manic expertise of me making an attempt to make sense of the previous yr’s progress, to put in writing these two posts: