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, since 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.