Unfolding

I started teaching myself functional programming 5 years ago after having discovered Haskell from a random Google search in the dead of night. Since then, I have fallen in love with the paradigm as well as the research and development of functional programming languages.

2 years ago, at 19 years old, I took a leap of faith—I had to drop out of my college education and start working full-time as a software developer. It was a difficult decision at the time, but the things eventually worked out to where I am now.

It's healthy for people my age to dream about the future, but I lost that somewhere along the way. I became a pragmatist who could only live through the present moment's strife.

Breaking into the industry as early as I did meant a lot as someone who's living through constant uncertainty. For one, financial security has improved my quality of life. But most importantly, the impact that it had on my mental health was profound.

Being given the opportunity to work on software that extends beyond myself has given me a purpose. I've always thought of programming as a form of self-expression, and an extension of one's cognition. Knowing that the code that I wrote can make a difference in the world is quite an awesome feeling.

Projects

Here's a short list of what I've been working on as of late:

• purescript-analyzer, a compiler frontend for PureScript.
• purefunctor.me, this personal website built in SvelteKit.

SvelteKit?

Previous iterations of my website were built on PureScript, Org Mode, and React. I've grown weary of the componentization of the web as well as JavaScript tooling. SvelteKit is a breath of fresh air in that it ties together base web technologies and its abstractions quite nicely.

Likewise, I find that the Elm Architecture is a simple and effective way to model web applications. Code reuse is easy because everything's a pure function; and with managed effects, it's even easier to reason about the application's behaviour.