Welcome to the Hidden Grove Substack.
My name is Ryan. I’m a professional programmer who works in the gaming industry on engines and tools. In my own time, I work on engines, tools, and games, as well as research and development into new forms of code editors, compilers, development environments, design systems, and operating systems.
I love the human adventure—the endeavor for meaningful and worthwhile lives, and the unending drive towards artistic, philosophical, spiritual, mathematical, and scientific horizons. This adventure is only possible through the empowerment of the individual. This is why I care about computing. It has been one of the greatest engines of individual liberty in history, and thus all manifestations of that liberty: widespread communicative abilities, ubiquitous critique and contempt for illegitimate authority, new forms of art, new modes of human existence through human-computer-interaction, and scientific and mathematical exploration.
I grew up seeing computers as some intended them to be—as bicycles for the mind. They don’t seem much like that anymore. It seems that almost every interaction with common day-to-day software is treated as an opportunity to exploit, manipulate, and control.
As I see it, the computing industry is burdened by complexity, centralization, lack of competition, ineffectual culture, sacrifice of value for the sake of programmer convenience, widespread lack of educational quality, and the elimination of general-purpose computing abilities. Too much software is corrupt, exploitative, slow, frustrating, poorly designed, and catered toward mindless consumption rather than creativity and production.
Hidden Grove is my project to change this—to build a new computing foundation with a new culture, community, and products which respect simplicity, design, performance, decentralization, culture, and education.
If you’re in favor of this mission, and if you enjoy what I write here as part of this project, please consider subscribing.
Paid Subscriber Benefits
As a paid subscriber, not only will you have access to all paywalled content here on Substack, you’ll also be granted Community access to the Code Depot, and the Discord server. You can obtain access to those—after subscribing—here.
Note: I reserve the right to revoke access to either the Discord community or Code Depot at my discretion, and my discretion alone. This may occur because of unapproved source code leaks, or behavior which actively diminishes the quality of the community. Depending on the circumstances, I may issue a full refund of the paid subscription.
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