This is the first post from my “Behind the Scenes” series, in which I interview various personalities in the blockchain industry.
Friedger runs probably the foremost Stacks stacking pool. He also develops with Clarity, a language built to make it easier to develop applications on the OG blockchain, Bitcoin. In fact, he deployed the very first user contract on the Stacks mainnet!
Friedger was kind enough to let me interview him - over Discord. The following interview has been edited for clarity (haha!) and brevity.
elif: Can you tell me a little about your history as a programmer?
friedger Ӿ: I started programming using a Commodore VIC-20. I have worked with several languages since then.
elif: Woah! That’s over 30 years of programming experience! What was your first language?
friedger Ӿ: German.
elif: Sorry, I meant programming language.
friedger Ӿ: BASIC.
elif: Ok. I actually never used it, or its Windows descendant Visual Basic
friedger Ӿ: There was no visual part back then. It was just text characters: letters & numbers.
elif: That’s true. When did you first get paid for your programming work?
friedger Ӿ: Around 10 years after I started programming.
elif: What kind of work it was? And also, what language was it in?
friedger Ӿ: The work I remember as my first paid job was a project about simulating decentralized heating systems for housing blocks. We used Delphi.
elif: Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that was an embedded systems programming project, no?
friedger Ӿ: No, it was visual Pascal.
elif: I never knew Delphi is Pascal. I do sometimes feel jealous about the languages I missed out on.
friedger Ӿ: At least that is how I remember it. The project to calculate profitability, so it was not really about hardware. It helped convince house owners to switch to more efficient heating systems by showing them the numbers for costs/etc.
elif: Nice! I have always loved a great modeling project. I have always been partial to scientific applications of programming. I started with C++ but moved to Python and did very little work in other languages. I just recently realized that I missed out on a lot of opportunities by knowing only one language.
friedger Ӿ: Knowing one language very well is good and makes you efficient.
elif: That is true. But outside programming, I tend to have a broad range of knowledge, as opposed to being a specialist.
friedger Ӿ: 🙂.
elif: So let’s jump a couple of years ahead. When and how did you get into cryptocurrency?
friedger Ӿ: Hm, I think I just wanted to try new technologies and bought some beers in Berlin in bitcoin. That was maybe 2012 or so. (Comment — Unfortunately, he can’t remember how many bitcoins he paid for the beer, so we can’t get to talk about how many millions of dollars that beer currently costs, à la that pizza.)
elif: Ok. That was around crypto 2.0. And was it because of what you saw and read, or because someone “pushed” you?
friedger Ӿ: I think I saw and read about BTC.
elif: When did you first join Blockstacks?
friedger Ӿ: When it was still OneName. (Comment — Yes. Stacks started as something called OneName! 🤯)
elif: Were you involved in designing and/or building Clarity?
friedger Ӿ: No.
elif: What do you love about the language?
friedger Ӿ: That it is decidable and functional.
elif: What features do you wish it had?
friedger Ӿ: Conversion between types and being able to validate BTC transactions/Merkle proof validation.
elif: What advice would you give Clarity learners?
friedger Ӿ: Learn thinking in functional terms and use tools to manage all the brackets. Examples include Clarity Language Server (which can be found here or here ), and Rainbow Brackets (which can also be found here or here).
elif: What kind of projects would like to see being built using Clarity?
friedger Ӿ: DAOs.
elif: How important do you think Clarity is to the growth of the Stacks protocol?
friedger Ӿ: It is a tool to build decentralized protocols. It is more important that users see, make, and use the value of the Stacks blockchain.
elif: What is your favorite Stacks project right now?
friedger Ӿ: BNS.
elif: Where do you see Clarity going in the future?
friedger Ӿ: I hope to see much more automation and verification during code development. There is quite a barrier for JavaScript developers But on the other hand, it is clear that Clarity programs are something different from traditional web projects.
elif: What are you currently building with Clarity?
friedger Ӿ: Boomboxes and more around stacking pools. Another project is Speed Spend, which runs on the testnet, making it easy for both users and developers to learn about Stacks.
elif: How does it help the STX ecosystem?
friedger Ӿ: It helps automate stacking for everybody.
elif: Why did you decide to build it?
friedger Ӿ: It just happened.
elif: How do you think blockchain/crypto would change the world?
friedger Ӿ: Crypto is currently mainly a niche for the rich. If we can get away from speculators towards real users it can help to improve the internet and how we value creators.
elif: Any last words?
friedger Ӿ: There is lots of space for improvements in the tooling for both Clarity and Stacks.
elif: Thank you for your time. And live long and prosper 🖖🏿!