Welcome Stefan Kruger

Stefan Kruger recently joined Dyalog Ltd from IBM, where he worked on distributed databases for many years.

Stefan spent a long time at university doing research in signal processing; after that he worked in several start-ups that were closely tied to the academic world. Then, taking a step away from technology for a while, Stefan pursued his interests in climbing and skiing, chasing winter around the globe until the money ran out.

Once safely back in gainful employment, Stefan set himself a goal of learning a new programming language each year, favouring those that are less mainstream…”the weirder, the better!”. This path has led him through such languages as Zig, Clojure, Elixir, Racket, Haskell, and many more. Once he discovered APL he was hooked. Recognising the need for more accessible resources while learning APL, Stefan wrote Learning APL, an introductory book for programmers familiar with other languages; he also edited together APL Cultivations, which covers most aspects of basic APL programming as well as some more in-depth lessons.

Stefan lives in Bristol with his wife Sarah, two cats, one dog, and n+1 bikes. He enjoys back country skiing in arctic Scandinavia or Canada during his winter holidays. In the summer, he stays active by road biking, especially climbing the classic cols in the Alps — strictly “type 2” fun.

We’re glad to have Stefan on board at Dyalog Ltd; his background and drive for continuous learning should be a positive contribution to our team, and we look forward to seeing his contributions to the APL community.

Welcome Jada Andrade

Jada moved to the United Kingdom in 2015 to pursue a degree in law with politics at the University of Manchester. On graduation she relocated to Reading in the south of England, where she took on various temporary positions in administration during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Jada first heard about APL when her partner, Rich Park, joined Dyalog Ltd in October 2018. Since then, she has attended various Dyalog Ltd events as a guest, including Dyalog ’19 and Dyalog ’22, and found the enthusiasm and passion of the APL community infectious, despite having little to no experience in computing. Attending these events left Jada with a very positive impression of Dyalog Ltd, particularly with the logistical planning and administrative organization evident from the smooth running of each event. She was also in the unique position of being able to interact with Dyalog Ltd employees prior to joining the company, fostering good relationships through casual communication.

Therefore, when the possibility of joining Team Dyalog as an administration assistant and office manager was brought up, she immediately jumped on the opportunity and officially joined the company towards the end of March 2023. She hopes to lessen the current workload of the administration team, and enjoys the varied nature of her role as she gets to explore legal, finance, customer relations and office management tasks.

Outside work, Jada enjoys improving her running skills, taking long walks in the bountiful nature of Berkshire, occasionally canoeing, discovering cool Japanese manga, and making delicious dishes in the kitchen.

Welcome Peter Mikkelsen

Peter joined Dyalog Ltd in mid-July 2022, shortly after finishing his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Aalborg University in Denmark. He didn’t originally plan to look for a job so soon, but when he saw that Dyalog Ltd had an opening involving three of his favorite things (C programming, interpreters, and APL) it was too good an opportunity to let pass and he was offered the job after a couple of online calls and interviews. Peter and his girlfriend had planned to move to Esbjeg in the south-west of Denmark for a while, so he thought it was great that Dyalog Ltd made it possible to work from home. He joined just in time to be able to participate in Dyalog ’22, which meant that he met lots of customers, which he considered a great experience.

His interest in APL started while he was at university – at one point he thought to himself: “This language looks so strange and different that it might be worth learning.” After spending some time playing around with it and participating in the 2021 APL Problem Solving Competition, he started writing his own little APL interpreter, which he says must have been the point of no return for him. Even in the first few months at Dyalog Ltd, he has learned a great deal about the language and its quirks, and a lot about implementation techniques.

Peter hopes to be able to help develop the language in the years to come, and to make sure dfns get the love they deserve, as he thinks that functional programming is definitely the way to go!

Even though he is part of the “young generation” of APLers, writing long trains and doing code golfing in APL has yet to catch his interest.

When not working, Peter is likely to be found taking a long walk, or trying out something computer science related that has caught his interest. Often, the code he writes in his free time is for the Plan 9 operating system, which in his mind is so elegant and simple that it is almost a shame it has so few users.

Welcome Silas Poulson

As is often the case these days, Silas found APL through online programming language discussions – both in various forums and through videos (Aaron Hsu’s Co-dfns and John Scholes’ Game of Life demonstatration in particular) – whilst attempting to understand the more esoteric ideas and their theoretical underpinnings provided by Scheme and other functional languages. After discovering APL, Silas attempted to use it for his Data Analysis coursework, sticking primarily to a small set of primatives. However, hitting WSFULLs with the datasets required meant that APL remained just a fun system to play with, which led to an understanding of where () in terms of other primatives ( and ).

Silas saw one of Dyalog Ltd’s adverts for a C programmer; this was a language he had learnt during his exploration of the Raspberry Pi and its associated add-on boards, so he applied. He joined Dyalog Ltd in June 2022 after graduating from Royal Holloway in England with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, and eased his way into exploring the internal workings of the interpreter, where he now spends most of his time.

When not programmaing, Silas can be found enjoying a good book and the occasional summer hike with friends and family.

Welcome Karta Kooner

Karta joined Dyalog in April, and is yet to meet anybody in person although he’s been told that this is not necessarily a bad thing! After completing his doctoral degree in theoretical physics, Karta stumbled upon Dyalog and APL entirely by happenstance. Being often captivated by things that look unfamiliar to him, and having an interest in most things, it was a code golf question that was answered in a strange, yet mathematical-looking language that took him to the profile of the poster, who happened to mention they were employed by Dyalog and currently hiring. He sent an email enquiring about the opportunity and, several remote interviews later, was happy to be hired as a C/C++ developer working on the interpreter.

Karta is one of the few members of the team that knew no APL whatsoever before joining and has been very impressed by Dyalog and APL thus far; he is very much looking forward to seeing how far the language can be taken, with an eye to further developing and potentially encouraging its use in academia and other technical fields of study.

In his spare time, Karta enjoys expanding his knowledge of both scientific and technical pursuits, and tinkering around with software and hardware systems, amongst his eclectic interests. When not found reading papers or learning an unfamiliar branch of mathematics, he will be caught thinking of a new engineering project to occupy his time, or stumbling through learning a new language, or maybe just delighting in the latest vixra paper.

Welcome Rodrigo Girão Serrão

The story of how Rodrigo got his first internship at Dyalog is, in his opinion, a textbook example of serendipity. As 2020 started, Rodrigo began actively participating in an online code golf community, where people try to solve programming challenges in as few bytes of code as possible. Whilst his golfing skills were possibly lacking, the challenges he posted were usually well accepted. Posting many challenges meant Rodrigo got exposed to answers in all sorts of programming languages, from C, Java, Python and JavaScript, to Jelly, 05AB1E, Husk…and APL. Because of the context and the aspect of it, Rodrigo first thought APL was one of those “esolangs” and not a serious programming language.

Rodrigo’s fascination with APL led him to start frequenting The APL Orchard chatroom, where a small number of brilliant people convened to discuss all things APL. Here he met Adám Brudzewsky, who was keen on teaching APL to newcomers, and so began Rodrigo’s journey to learn APL.

His interest in APL kept growing, and he found it to be a simple and expressive language that also incorporated his affinity with mathematics. One day, while lurking in The APL Orchard, Adám asked Rodrigo if he would be interested in taking an intern position at Dyalog…a few emails later it was established that Rodrigo would work as a part-time intern at Dyalog during the Summer of 2020. This enabled Dyalog to make the most of Rodrigo’s skills in teaching and technical writing, and meant Rodrigo could indulge his passion for sharing knowledge about mathematics and programming while still finishing his MSc in Applied Mathematics. After his internship, Rodrigo took some time to complete his MSc thesis before returning to Dyalog to finish what he had started and hopefully to take part in many other interesting projects. When he is not working for Dyalog, Rodrigo may be found leading a Portuguese APL meetup, writing a blog post for his website (mathspp.com), or maybe leading a workshop or course. Other than working, Rodrigo likes to spend time with his loved ones, read fantasy books, eat chocolate, and watch silly comedy movies.