കൊച്ചി
Dear reader,
One of the things that gave us humans a leg up is our knack for making tools. First it was spears and hammers, then came language and symbols, tools more for the mind than the hands. The good ones never really did the work for us. They just stretched how far we could go, and left the judgement calls to us.
If you ever find yourself in Fort Kochi, go take a look at the ചീനവല by the shore (they are a short walk from where we work). They have been around for centuries and still work pretty much the same way: a handful of fishermen walk out along the big wooden beam, the stones tied to the other end do most of the heavy lifting, and the net dips into the sea and comes back up. What we love about them is that the net doesn’t really do the fishing. The fishermen still read the water and decide when to drop it; the net just gives them a much longer reach than their arms ever could.
Software is one of the most flexible tools we have ever made, but for a long time it only really fit the people who could write it. If something didn’t work the way they liked, they just changed it, until it fit them like an exoskeleton. Everyone else kinda had to take what they were given. That is starting to change. The new tools can read, write and reason, and it is pretty tempting to just hand our thinking over to them and wait for an answer. We would rather keep to the old way: tools you work with, not tools you wait on, with people and machines reasoning, making and deciding things together.
Chibi is our little studio in Kochi where we chase that. We spend most of our time close to real work, with people who are really good at what they do, figuring out what these tools are actually good for (and what they aren’t!).
Mostly, we learn by doing: building small things, keeping what helps and throwing back what doesn’t, much like the fishermen down the road.
If any of this sounds interesting to you, electronic letters are always welcome at company@chibi.sh. You can also find some of our work on GitHub.