Wingback

Can you name three software companies you admire and why you admire them? -or- Which technological feats of the past inspire you?

Thekla Inc, Notion, Discord

Thekla is the video game company that made The Witness and Braid, which had profound impact on me. They are driven by the unique vision of Jonathan Blow, game developer and the inventor of the programming language Jai. Also, I like a lot that their current projects are secret. I'm waiting to be surprised.

Notion's product driven ambition deserves respect. At Upcarta, we try to be inspired by that. I also love how Notion can be useful from individuals keeping simple notes to companies organizing their workflows. We use Notion at Upcarta.

I love how organic Discord came to be, or at least how organic it seemed. It's "just what we needed". It was needed for gamers. I remember using skype to play games with my friends, and how painful that was. Switching to discord was fast and refreshing. But now it is great for working remotely, hanging out with your friends who live far away.

Why did you get into programming?

I was studying computer science because I was academically successful and wasn't interested in anything else. I knew a bit of C++ from my curiosity, but I had no special interest for programming until the third year of university. The first year courses (Intro to Programming, Advanced programming, etc) were just a part of school, the homeworks felt like puzzles.

What I would consider got me into programming was two things: the Programming Languages course I took and the following internship at Kent. There, I learnt Go and I discovered how excited I got to discover new ways of programming. Since then I did a little bit of Elixir and Go, and now I am learning Rust. The joy of programming only increases day by day.