"Insect" is looking for contributors

Ecosystem
#1

Hi PureScript community!

You probably don’t know me. I have been somewhat active in the PureScript community a few years ago (list of my PureScript projects), but I have to admit that I have been out of the loop for quite a while now.

The main reason for this was not related to the language (which I still love). The main reason was actually the size of the PureScript community. I have two larger open-source projects which are written in PureScript (cube-composer and Insect). Both have an active user-base (not huge, but still). But it was extremely hard to find people that are both interested in your project and able to write code in PureScript. I also have a few open source projects which are written in Rust, and even though it’s not as mainstream as something like JavaScript, it’s still far easier to find open-source contributors for those projects - and open source work is just much more fun if you are not alone.

I consider the cube-composer project to be “finished”. But I would really like to further actively develop the Insect project. Insect is a high precision scientific calculator with full support for physical units. You can try it in the browser: https://insect.sh/. It also has a terminal-version. Due the lack of outside contributions, I have seriously considered rewriting the project in another language. I even started two or three attempts. But it would actually be extremely sad to do so. PureScript is the perfect language for this project. Writing parsers & interpreters is just so much easier.

I am writing here today because it looks like the PureScript community is more active than ever - which is fantastic! If someone here is interested in joining me on this project, I’d be very glad to welcome more developers or maintainers to the project! In the beginning, I would mostly need some help with upgrading the project to the latest PureScript version and a modern tooling (packaging, dependency handling, CI, e…).

Let me know if you are interested! And thank you all very much for keeping this programming language alive.

11 Likes
#2

Hey @sharkdp!

I guess I’m kind of interested in working on and maintaining Insect, plus I’m also a physical units and quantities nerd, which may be useful here I guess. Although I’ve already made some minor Insect-related contributions, I’m not super-familiar with the code, so I might need some time to get myself up to speed. Additionally, I have a severe lack of time at the moment, and I probably won’t have much time for two months or so.

It’s also worth noting that just like you, I’ve also been “out of the loop for quite a while now” with regards to PureScript, and I’m not as enthusiastic about it as I once used to be. However, I haven’t entirely lost my interest, and I think I can still code in PureScript fairly well, or else re-learn what I forgot.

With that being said, I’d be excited to join in!

3 Likes
#3

Awesome - thank you! I remember your helpful contributions on the purescript-quantities repo (which is the underlying physical-units machinery of Insect). I guess we could start with single PRs but I’m also very open to adding more maintainers to the project.

#4

Sure, I guess I’ll start by fixing a couple of easy GitHub issues.

1 Like