Darius J Chuck

Programming bio

Early years

My experience with application development started around 2002, when I created my first computer game using The Games Factory, a visual game development tool. I started learning my first programming language, C++, around 2004.

I was involved in a major Polish game development community based around the website gamedev.pl (later moved to warsztat.gd), participating in game development competitions, even organizing one. I was also briefly involved in development of Warlock's Gauntlet -- a major project written in C++ created by members of the communtiy. I learned the basics of the exotic Squirrel scripting language as a part of this project.

I went on to learn many more programming languages (such as C, D, Vala, Pascal), writing computer games for competitions and various small projects. I also got interested in web development, learning some (X)HTML, CSS, PHP, basic JavaScript, SQL and creating websites and a content management system.

Łódź University of Technology

At Łódź University of Technology I studied Computer Science (aka Informatics) and created projects in Java, C#, Ada, x86 assembly, wrote scripts in Bash and Python, queries in SQL and other fun stuff.

Internship in Edinburgh

I did an internship at University of Edinburgh School of Informatics, which involved learning a lot about functional programming. I read and wrote some Haskell and OCaml. I wrote games in Links, an experimental functional web programming language developed by a team of some the best programming language researchers in the world led by Philip Wadler. Writing these games helped me optimize the language's runtime significantly. This work became a basis for my bachelor's thesis. I learned more JavaScript, which became my go-to programming language from then on.

From the very beginning of my adventure with programming I was fascinated with programming language design and at some point I wanted to develop my own language. I created Brainfuck interpreters, various small domain-specific languages, and eventually, for my thesis, my own Lisp-based hybrid text and visual web programming language capable of implementing a full-featured Pac-Man clone. A big step on my language-designer path, which I will certainly follow into the future.

Early career

While doing my master's, I started working at Samsung R&D in Łódź as a JavaScript developer. I learned AngularJS there and a lot about web application development. After three months, the Łódź office was closed and I worked in Warsaw, while living and studying in Łódź. After a few long months of that, I went to work for Mobica in Łódź. There I intensely worked for the duration of my initial contract, after which I focused on completing my master's.

In the meantime I was also involved in a start-up as one of the main developers of an ambitious web application, which placed its technological bets on cutting-edge trends, such as full stack JavaScript with Angular 2 and LoopBack. And like many start-ups, this one too died an early death of overambition and underfunding.

TomTom Polska

I completed my master's degree and, after taking a little break, in the winter of 2017 I moved on to work for TomTom Polska in Łódź, initially as a front-end developer. I was given a task of developing a web application from scratch, based on early mock ups, as a sole front-end developer in an all back-end team. After about nine months the baby was born and successfully launched into production and is still up and running, serving paying customers as of this writing.

New Scala team

Next, an opportunnity presented itself to join a Scala enthusiast friend in forming a Scala-pioneering back-end team. We took over several Scala and Java projects from a similarly progressive team abroad and carried on, maintaining some, extending some, and rewriting some. All this while I was basically learning Scala from scratch along with technologies like Akka and Play. That went pretty well and I rapidly graduated to Scala Deputy Sheriff, working alongside my friend the Sheriff. Our two-person team quickly grew.

TomTom Germany

A possibility came along for my friend and me of joining the aforementioned progressive team abroad. We decided to pursue that and eventually landed in Berlin, working for TomTom Germany. There we took on new Scala projects.

All throughout my time as a back-end developer I continued to work with JavaScript and later on TypeScript, creating internal visualisation tools.

Towards the end of 2019, the project that our team was working on ran its course. Team members migrated internally and externally. I quit to reevaluate my priorities.

Tree Annotation Organization

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, I created TAO, a project with a vision to simplify the software world.

2021

I entered 2021 in good spirits and ready for a professional challenge. Unfortunately, a promising start turned into the beginning of the worst year of my professional life. It has taught me harsh lessons about the software industry and my place in it.

Meanwhile, the ongoing pandemic has changed the world, causing millions of deaths, affecting hundreds of millions directly, and virtually everyone indirectly. I was no exception.

All in all there was no shortage of perfect triggers for vicious circles which inevitably caused harm to my mental and physical health and life overall. Still, I have remained relatively lucky, being able to write this.

Jevko

Before falling into a long existential crisis, I split Jevko off of TAO and tried my hand solo at a little open-source project, with no spectacular results.

2022

And so I have entered 2022: with great uncertainty, trying to climb my way out of a crisis.

Time shall tell if and how this story continues...