So, I woke up today. Got my coffee, family went to sleep, and I have a free afternoon.
I thought about writing something. I may delete this article, but if you are reading this, it means I went through with it.
Recently, people have been asking me why I’m pausing Boo to work on a programming language. I think it would actually be cool to write down how I feel.
Boo is a code editor I created solely for myself; I never had the intention of making it a mainstream editor. Of course, it would be fun if people used it, but that was never my goal. This year I got it working in a functional state, where I can actually use it for my daily work. It has innovative human-keyboard navigation and replaces the LSP system with something faster and less costly for the OS. So why on earth am I not open-sourcing it? That’s what people keep asking me.
First, let’s go step by step.
My mind isn’t really moved by the idea that it would be a success or a failure — the end user of Boo is me. I don’t feel it’s there yet; in fact, I think software should inspire us. Working on Rio Terminal and Boo in my free time — both written in Rust and sharing many similarities — affects my joy, because it starts to become something automatic. Both have similar architecture, language, release process, and etcetera.
Since I was a kid, I liked to build Lego blocks. That’s probably what I did the most besides playing football or video games. The fun thing about Lego is that one day you can build a castle, and the next day you can build a ship. Not necessarily using the same pieces and colors — you can actually add a lot of stuff that’s external to what you have, like a wood stick.
When programming becomes repetitive, the odds of you creating something that makes people go “wow” are reduced quite a bit. It isn’t a rule, of course. You need to be inspired to make inspiring software.
I always use the example of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. This game is so well crafted that I know people who don’t even like video games but bought a console just to play it — and once they finished, they sold everything. This is what I’m talking about: taking time to build something so that once people try it, they remember it for as long as they live.
Boo isn’t a business. I don’t need or want to make money out of it. I don’t have a deadline, nor do I want to create another VS Code. I don’t feel like forcing it to happen.
In that case, I don’t necessarily need to stop building Lego blocks, right? I’ll just park it there, and when the inspiration comes back, I’ll pick it up where it was. That being said, I paused Boo, and I am working on my own programming language. Eventually, my idea is to rewrite Boo to use it.
“Wow! That’s a lot of work.” Indeed. But it’s my hobby stuff. I’ve always loved programming languages, and I am having a blast learning more about binaries and compilers. So, I don’t really feel I need to follow people’s cake recipe for success. That’s how my mind works, and I will stick with it.
By the way, this article was written using Boo.