Building software for yourself
Today we’re talking to Linus Lee about the practice of building software for yourself. Linus has several side projects we could talk about, but today’s show is focused on Linus’ dynamically typed functional programming language called Ink that he used to write his full text personal search engine called Monocle.
Linus is focused on writing software that solves his own needs, all of which is open source, to help him learn more deeply and organize the knowledge of his life.
Discussion
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Peter Klee
2021-08-29T19:23:03Z ago
Wonderful episode thanks a lot!
Back in 1990 (!) as part of my master thesis in computer science, I had developed a language extension for Lisp, which implemented on object oriented extension (incl. inheritance) and the notion of bi-directional associations between objects. We had the “official” object system “CLOS” not at hand! A big potion of that was done using the powerful macro system of Lisp. That layer was then used to develop a reasoning system for multiple expert system models.
Since then I often did very similar framework-like things. E.g. currently(!) I am working on a java-based system wich allows to interpret models (stored as JSON) which can have different meta models and include flexible no-code layout algorithms (including heat-mapping, icons, …). We are using this as a multi-user modelling engine for enterprise architecture artefacts. Like the idea of “Ink” developing the “base”-tooling is fully separated from domain use case. Currently this tooling is not (yet?) open source, as we might use it at work (SAP).
Best Regards Peter