About
Author of production open source across three ecosystems: 50 Ruby gems with 820M+ combined downloads, 400+ Haskell packages on Hackage, and active Rust crates on crates.io. DataMapper and ROM core team alumni.
Two decades building developer tools and production systems. Senior IC roles at major financial institutions, startups through to successful exits, new builds and legacy rescues, all under regulatory and market pressure. Remote-first, primarily with US clients. German expat based in Malta.
Manifesto: Self Inflicted Complexity
Most software complexity is not domain-inherent. It's self-inflicted: needless distribution, dynamic languages without guardrails, missing tooling, misdiagnosed root causes. The cost is hidden until it isn't.
Self-inflicted complexity is self-reinforcing. Teams "just add another service, database, or vendor" instead of solving the actual problem.
The Exorcism
Diagnosing these problems and leading the change with developers, stakeholders, and boards. Not an armchair general: hands-on work that makes it happen.
Writing
Pattern Parrots and the Semantic Knot (February 2026): AI code generators are great amplifiers. But amplifiers amplify misalignment too. On mutation testing as the deterministic closed loop.
Open Source
Stratosphere: Type-safe AWS CloudFormation generation. Born in Haskell, ported to Rust.
mrs: Rust monorepo with tooling for PostgreSQL (clients, migrations, ephemeral instances), OCI containers, typed HTTP, Git worktrees, and CI automation.
Unparser: Turn Ruby AST into semantically equivalent Ruby source.
Many more at github.com/mbj.
How to Contract
Engagements focused on high-impact, decisive technical action. Not audits that collect dust. Typical clients retain for years, not weeks.
Limited availability, but a conversation is always welcome.
Reach out: info@schirp-dso.com
