2 #+AUTHOR: Richard Westhaver <ellis@rwest.io>
3 #+OPTIONS: ^:nil toc:nil num:nil html-postamble:nil
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8 If we've spoken recently I may have mentioned this new venture, but I
9 certainly didn't communicate my intentions well. Now is the time to
12 * The Compiler Company 14 The name is a play on the phrase
/Compiler Collection/, as in
[[https://gcc.gnu.org/][GNU 15 Compiler Collection (GCC)]] and emphasizes my approach to
16 problem-solving involving compiler technologies.
18 I recently registered as an LLC, but the purpose of the company is
19 that of a company incubator, or
/compiler/ if you will. In other
20 words, I intend for
/The Compiler Company, LLC/ to be a hub for
21 developing various interconnected products and services which can be
22 operated and managed independently of each other.
24 /The Compiler Company/ technically provides two things:
25 1. free and open-source software
26 2. professional consulting services
28 The software is made publicly available without restriction and anyone
29 can pay for paid professional consultations/training/etc.
31 The
/core/ of our software suite is an insanely powerful development
32 environment built from scratch. It is the catalyst of engineering for
33 every other software component I build and reflects how I believe
34 software should be developed
/today/.
36 The suite further contains a mixed bag of plugins, extensions,
37 libraries, and applications intended for software development in
38 addition to
/all/ vendored dependencies. This setup gives us complete
39 control over every possible piece of code we encounter in the systems
44 Before introducing my company I think it's important to properly
47 + Richard Westhaver (ellis@rwest.io)
48 + 29-years-old (he/him)
50 + UConn graduate 2016 (economics+philosophy)
52 For most of my life, music has been my muse. I played piano and drums
53 in the school bands, gigs in the local scene and in college started
54 gravitating towards digital recording, sound design, and the process
55 of making music. I started to recognize all the little things about
56 music that made it so attractive to me: Composition, Rhythm, Design,
57 Creativity... All these fundamental concepts, which weave between
58 eachother to produce a piece of music. It's something I started to
59 think about deeply and apply to other mediums -- most importantly,
62 Programming, in many ways is music to computers. Programmers
/are/ 63 musicians. This has been my approach ever since I started learning the
64 basics of Python. After college I began tinkering with Arduino boards,
65 learning about basic NLP models, and building digital synthesizers
66 with Max/MSP. I eventually got a job at a SaaS company in an Agile
67 product support role which was the perfect opportunity for me. I
68 learned all about web applications, software lifecycles, APIs, and the
69 usual cloud infrastructure. In a matter of months I knew what I wanted
70 to do for the rest of my life.
72 For the next few years I worked all day and programmed all night. I
73 became fluent in all things software and was in this sort of crazy
74 cycle, but loved it. Around early 2019 I started working closely with
75 a small group of exceptionally talented developers. We were delivering
76 massive projects for our clients while developing our own R&D
79 One day, I was unexpectedly laid off. I would be lying if I didn't
80 admit it was absolutely
/soul-crushing/. It was at the beginning of
81 COVID and there was a huge corporate shake-up (brand new C-suite), but
82 for someone like me it's impossible not to internalize that and wonder
83 why. This was a difficult time in my life and it took me quite some
84 time to get back on my feet.
86 On the bright side, I did get to spend some time thinking about
/how/ 87 I want to program. When you're working 60h+ weeks at a software
88 company, this is something you can rarely afford if at all. I also
89 made an important decision on where I want my career to go - on how I
90 want to make money and participate in the industry. I want to work for
94 I wasn't a Computer Science major at UConn. The only programming I did
95 in a classroom setting was in a statistics class in a program called
96 Stata. As is the case with other self-taught hackers my idea of
97 computer systems and how they should operate is probably worth
98 explaining to avoid confusion.
100 I call this section
/Philosophy/, because I want you to question
101 it. Philosophy is the way things are from the leisure of a single
102 man's armchair, so I encourage you to pick it apart for yourself.
107 We have a long way to go. The important thing is to keep up the
108 momentum. Before the start of 2024 you can expect another update on
109 some of the projects below.
110 ** the.compiler.company
