Valentin Gagarin

I am a software developer living in Hamburg. I work at my dream job for Tweag, helping to make computers work reliably in the long run with Nix.

Expertise

My recent professional focus is in

• technical writing
• build automation
• academic research
• software development for web applications
• web design

which I continuously execute on with persistent motivation and a principled approach.

From my formal studies I have theoretical knowledge and some hands-on experience in the areas of

• machine learning (cognitive automation)
• computer vision
• robotics
• embedded systems
• type theory
• differential privacy

which I am constantly extending in every new project I have the privilege to contribute to.

I am highly interested in opportunities to act in an apprentice role alongside someone with profound experience to learn

• using a major pure functional language in a production environment
• operating systems development
• hardware driver programming
• hardware design

Philosophy

I'm convinced that informatics is a more appropriate term than computer science, as it has little to do with computers. Similarly software development really is knowledge acquisition and change management – which in turn is fundamentally about people and their evolving needs. Dealing with an enormous amount of accidental complexity around the fact that we use the computer as a tool to extend our mental ability obviously requires deep technical understanding, experience, continuous learning, and good old tinkering. For me this is a matter of course on the job.

My default working style is primarily influenced by agile principles, although by conviction and experience I strongly believe in mostly remote work.

Skills

Education

• Computer Science (Bachelor of Science, TUHH, 2018)
• Liberal Arts, Filmmaking (Bachelor of Fine Arts, HfbK Hamburg, 2014)

Professional interests

I am an avid reader, driven by curiosity. Mathematics and scientific research put me under their spell, so much that I quit work to study for a Master's degree in Computer Science.

I care a lot about accessibility and sustainability in computing. I am also interested in projectional editors and a few other ideas that have the potential for significant impact on how we interact with computers and do knowledge work in general.

I actively participate in the Nix community on Discourse and GitHub, working towards establishing Nix as one of the cornerstones of software development.

In my capacity as a software engineer at Tweag, and primarily out of passion, I

• wrote the blog post Taming Unix with functional programming which shows that Nix is founded on a surprisingly simple but revolutionary idea.
• wrote a Nix language tutorial to help beginners overcome the steep learning curve Nix is known for.
• founded the Nix documentation team in an attempt to flatten that learning curve.
• am a founding member of the Nix maintainers team, collaborating on shaping a vision for the future of Nix.

Contact