Jacob Schmidt

Jacob Schmidt

Engineer and Catholic convert. I entered NVIDIA right after my conversion from atheism, realized the implications of bringing technology into the world in service of status and wealth instead of towards the good of those impacted by it, and decided to dedicate my life to enabling the prudent use of technology.

I have a deep care for craft and beauty ordered towards love, which is reflected in my work, including the programming language I spent a couple of years creating. Most of my time lately goes to Camino, though I spare some for the other two projects below.

Work

Camino

Technical Cofounder

Camino has the mission of connecting people together on paths oriented towards their flourishing: to counter technologies designed to isolate us and keep us trapped in life-destroying cycles.

We're doing this by creating an app that matches people with an accountability partner and walks them through their choice of excellent digital detox or pornography recovery courses.

(I'm trying to trick the serpent into eating its tail to renew the soil.)

Nasper

Language Author

Nasper is a small, native, linearly typed, performant functional programming language. I created this over my time in undergrad, as I was annoyed every time I used a programming language because the semantics in my head, learned from theory, were so much cleaner than what I was forced to write in imperative languages.

At the same time, I was dissatisfied by the lack of hardware awareness in functional languages, which prevented their use in serious engineering endeavors. So I used linear typing and stream/closure monomorphization to create hardware-aware primitives in a language with functional semantics: allowing for the speed of systems programming languages, the nice semantic properties of functional languages, combined together with the craft and simplicity of languages like C or Go (at least of old Go; nowadays Go has lost the Thompson and Pike touch and made some really overly complex decisions).

This website's server is written in Nasper.

Mission Capital

Creative & Technical Director

Mission Capital advances the New Evangelization by growing personal evangelizing ministries through donor engagement, advisory services, curriculum development, and direct teaching.

I recently directed an overhaul of their book design, and look forward to enriching the organization's already solid work with more beauty (though Camino remains priority over this).

Essays