More than a decade ago, Paul Graham, the guy behind the startup accelerator Y Combinator, wrote an article about frighteningly ambitious startup ideas. One of those ideas was replacing email. Six and a half years into developing Mensago, I wholeheartedly agree. Some stretches over the years have been incredibly difficult, and I feel like I’ve just recently come out on the other side of one of them.
Workable Device Sync
Back in August, I hit a major milestone: the ability to sync among multiple devices. It was janky and very fragile, but it was something. In the last few months I’ve been working to make it work more reliably, and it’s been a real struggle. Ironically, outside of the design work behind the application of the underlying cryptography Mensago runs on, nothing I’ve worked on has been a greater challenge. It’s a fairly well-known bit of wisdom that we learn more in our struggles and failures than we do in our successes, and I’ve learned a lot both about myself and the world around me.
The struggle has been worth it, however. I’ve developed what I believe to be a level-headed, informed opinion of machine learning, inaccurately known by its better-known term ‘AI’, and its place in software development–it’s not all good and it’s not all bad, but like the blockchain hype of the 2010s, the infuriating level of hype surrounding the tech and ethical issues it’s created has created an incredibly bad taste in many peoples’ mouths. Going into more depth on this would be a post for another day, however. I also have learned more about what it is to be a software engineer as opposed to just a guy who writes code. My development chops need to level up if this is going to last. The approach which underpins engineering as a field have changed my perspective and is now a common lens through which I view the world–a more methodical way of solving problems and it’s helped me with consistency.
Governance and the Future
One other concept that hit me recently is that for Mensago to remain sustainable, it needs to be ready for company, and it needs to be capable of being maintained long-term. As such, I’ve begun the process of founding The Mensago Foundation, a not-for-profit organization (NPO) to guide its development like many other software projects that have gone before. The paperwork will take some time because of the legal processes involved, but the opportunities it will create will be well worth the effort. Once the Foundation has been founded, I will be pursuing grants and other funding sources with the end goal of going full-time into this and hiring people to help. Once I realized how Mensago is viable as a technology, it has been my dream to do this as my life’s work. The thought of being paid to build something to literally make the world safer and guide others in its development gives me joy in a way that few other things do.
I’m also recognizing that maintaining this website is not a thrilling idea. Reducing complexity and hosting costs are the goals, so in the coming months, this site will like see a dramatic transformation. WordPress is fine, but it’s got a lot of annoyances, too, and it’s pretty heavy for the goals of the project.
Development Progress
Connect continues to progress. There are three main task domains which are the focus for the first public release: messaging, contacts, and notetaking. Rich formatting, such as styling text with different sizes, colors, and typefaces, is a developing technology for JavaFX, the toolkit in which Connect is implemented. The tooling is not quite ready yet, but it’s getting close enough to being usable that I’m keeping a close eye on its development. The current focus is on components which will make keyboard shortcuts both efficient and flexible and, at the same time, also make possible a command palette as seen in software development tools. Adding features which will actually make Connect useful for day-to-day tasks is the guiding motivation for now and while there almost certainly won’t be a demo before the end of the year, it’s coming, little by little, bit by bit.