I accidentally ended up in Silicon Valley

By the time I finished high school, I gradually started appreciating the idea of polishing my projects and seeing them evolve over time: I had a few active projects by then, that let me build tiny communities. I realized it was not about writing code: I fell in love with the idea of making something that people would use, carefully writing documentation in a language that I wasn’t even fluent in at the time, getting feedback, and iterating on it. Coming from an art background, where a work is done once it’s on display, this was a new mindset for me.

It was when I was looking for my first internship that I went to a local software house, to have an interview with the founder, a middle-aged Italian man, a big guy with a majestic beard. I was extremely nervous and shaking while he asked me to introduce myself. It was my first ever interview and I had not yet learned how to handle such situations. During the first minute, I went on about my background. “Come on”, I thought before starting, “my background is quite interesting—a young boy learning programming, some GitHub projects with a few dozen stars, I might as well impress him”.

I was not even two minutes in when I went with my go-to: “to me, software development is an art, you create something from a blank canvas” - such a cliche. He stopped me right there, and firmly corrected me. To him, I was completely wrong: programming is strict, rigid, structured, it must not be art. Art is freeform, unstructured, chaotic.
Years later, I still vividly remember that moment: it was the first time someone challenged my view on my biggest passion. I didn’t get the job—I did get an offer, but I wasn’t sure that was the philosophy I wanted to embrace, and turned it down. I’ve thought about it a lot since then, it made me reflect and shifted my perspective, although I don’t fully agree with him.

That same year, it was time to write my bachelor’s thesis. It was quite straightforward: I chose the professor that taught me the most about software engineering and its best practices as my supervisor, prof. Mirko Viroli, and emailed him asking for a topic, mentioning I was interested in either utility software or programming languages (very distant fields!). It didn’t take him longer than 10 minutes to reply, complaining about the complexity of LaTeX: he wanted a new simpler language to write his slides in, and proposed I build it, with prof. Gianluca Aguzzi as my co-supervisor.
I still wonder if he knew about Typst, but I blindly accepted the challenge, unaware that I was getting into the black hole of typesetting.
I went head-first and within two days I had already designed its syntax: it had to be easy to pick up, so my first choice was building on top of the well-known Markdown. On the third day I came up with its name: Quarkdown—oh boy I love it.

Months went by, and development was progressing nicely while I was learning a lot, and occasionally swearing at regex patterns, but that’s part of the journey. Every now and then, the big man’s words would echo: programming is not art. I was applying what I’d learned: strict structure, clear rules, no room for ambiguity. I also noticed the software didn’t have to stop at making slides. I mentioned it to the professor, who emailed me back: “Generalizing is costly”. I assumed he meant not to overcomplicate it, but my stubbornness took over, and I kept going. Within a few weeks, Quarkdown could effortlessly produce slides, articles and books. At this exact moment, the post you’re reading was written in Quarkdown.

At that point, I assumed it was time to spread the word: took good care of the documentation, and showcased it on Reddit, where it got a decent amount of attention. A few people reached out to me, praising the idea and suggesting improvements, while some others were quick to point out how needless it was, when there was already good competition in the field. Again, my stubbornness kept me going.

In October 2024 I defended my thesis, and received a standing ovation from the audience. To me, it felt like I finally made it. Little did I know what was coming next.

Of course, as I learned during my youth, it wasn’t the end of the journey: the project had to be polished further. I was determined to keep improving Quarkdown, and that’s what I did. It was June 3, 2025, that changed my life. A massive traffic spike hit the repo, I would reload the page every few seconds to see the star count going up and up. Within a day, it had 2000. The next day, 4000. It was insane. I had people from all over the world reaching out to me and praising my work.
Where was all this coming from? Turns out someone I never heard of, who goes by asicsp, had posted about it on Hacker News, and it got to number one on the front page.

At the end of the same month, I received a message from Dave, founder of Falconer, a startup based in San Francisco that’s aiming at building a new, powerful knowledge management platform. He had a friend sharing with him the Hacker News post, and was impressed by my work and wanted to chat.
We hopped on a quick call, I mentioned I was still a student, but he didn’t mind; he openly said they’re looking for people who can ship software and deliver valuable documentation, and he offered me an on-site position.

Imagine my reaction: a student from Italy, with little professional experience, getting an offer from a Silicon Valley startup. I was over the moon. I told my family about it, and they were warning me: “Why would they want a student from the other side of the world?”, my sister genuinely asked. I understood her concerns. I myself was scared: the company was so new it wasn’t even on Google Maps. But still, I was stubborn enough to have a little faith and I reassured them. Four months later, I finally got my visa and moved to San Francisco.

Today, we’re close to Christmas 2025, and I’ve been here for a month. It has been a wild ride so far and I’m loving every bit of it—the team, the environment, the general vibe of the city, and I can’t believe how far I’ve come since that interview years ago. From a guy stuttering his way through introducing himself, to a software engineer in California, sitting every morning at a desk around open, brilliant minds, people who love their jobs and share my same passion, perhaps seeing programming as an art after all.

If you made it this far, keep believing in what you do—you never know what’s next. And I haven’t been able to reach out to asicsp yet, so if you’re reading this, I owe you a big one.