nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpqlpjzg9hr59qagnrzk0uexcdk6jrecdwh6z8qm9wpa6at8spwcftq0l4sqh (nprofile…4sqh) It's been a little over a decade so it's probably safe enough to tell this story.
Way back in ancient times, I had a solo project creating a novel programming language. It was a side/hobby thing that I mostly did with my evenings and weekends, but I was hugely proud of it, and ran it as open source from the beginning.
It was never super visible, and several other new languages from the era got way more general awareness and excitement - but in the relatively tight-knit world of compiler authors, I ended up on the radar. Several companies tried to headhunt me because of this project; but this story is about Apple.
This was back before Swift was publicly announced. I got a very cryptic contact from someone who would only say he worked at Apple and really wanted to talk to me personally, provided I signed an NDA. The contract stipulated that I could tell no one that I was having the conversation, or what it was about, including immediate family members. For a minimum of five years.
It was weird and gave me bad vibes but I figured fuck it, why not hear him out, and gave in to my curiosity.
He told me he was recruiting top-end compiler designers for a new language (it wasn't even named Swift yet) and he wanted to interview me for the team based on my personal project.
I was (and continue to be) deeply proud of the stuff I pulled of with that language, so I agreed to a phone interview.
Partway through, this guy starts describing a very tricky and complicated challenge of language design. It is abundantly obvious this is not a hypothetical screener question but a real issue the team is actually, actively stuck on.
And he asks me to describe how I'd go about solving it.
I answered with some very non-commital (but tbh very solid) insistence that I could only do such work with a much deeper understanding of the project's goals, design philosophy, and existing decision-making process. He, of course, wouldn't give any details because Big Deep Tech Secrecy.
We chatted a bit more, but it was obvious he wasn't ready to give up. A couple days later he called me back and asked if I'd be willing to get on a plane and spend a week in California to "finish the interview with the rest of the team."
I thanked him for his interest and politely said I was happy in my current gig.
I never heard from Apple again.
Amelia /
npub1yf…mhnh0
2025-03-06 04:03:54
in reply to nevent1q…ymyy
Author Public Key
npub1yfpujmseeaq9qts7nc5ryz9gftm50dpz4d7847kvr3zswrww0g7qymhnh0Published at
2025-03-06 04:03:54Event JSON
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