A year passes quickly, especially when it’s your first year with a new company! Neil has now been our “JavaScript guy” in the Tools group for a full trip round the sun, and we asked him how he’s enjoyed his first twelve months. Fortunately, he seems to have settled in well – “Most of all, I don’t think any company has done as much to make me feel welcome, or to check in sometimes. Being a remote worker, that was always greatly appreciated. Also, I’ve worked for quite a few companies – so I mean it.”

For anyone considering working at Dyalog Ltd. Neil has the following advice – “Be prepared to be involved in conversations that push you to the limit of both your practical and your theoretical understanding. I mostly get to watch the APL masters work from a slight distance. If anything, that was the reason I chose to join Dyalog Ltd. The patient mentorship from Adám (and glimpses in to APL language decisions and history) has been a delight. Watching how quickly Morten can work, knowing every nook and cranny, has been… humbling. However, that’s where it’s interesting: there is so much skill and ability packed in to such a tiny company. But they’re nice people and there’s nothing to fear.”

At Dyalog Ltd, Neil mainly works on a project that will allow cross-platform ⎕WC-style interfaces, optionally remotely, and even embedded in webpages. He has also dedicated himself to steadily increase his APL skills. His broad experience with non-APL environments and languages has provided another useful outside perspective to our efforts at connecting APL with the outside world.

When not working, Neil enjoys spending time outside. He spends a lot of time in nature, walking and enjoying the lovely lakes where he lives in Germany. He likes to grow wildflowers because he hopes that they will grow without any help, but unfortunately this is not always the case and this year, he had only two flowers before August – it’s as if they hadn’t read the packet that very clearly stated that they should bloom in ‘June – July’!

Five years has passed since Stine joined Dyalog Ltd, and in only a few weeks she will also celebrate a year and a half as our CEO. When asked about her first five years, Stine said “Time passes very quickly when you’re having fun, so for me, this anniversary has come far sooner than I was expecting! Taking over this role from Gitte meant not rocking the boat too much – if it’s not broken, there is no reason to fix it. I do make changes though – I try to use my fresh perspective to identify places where we can improve. These changes must be made while still staying true to the Dyalog culture and making people feel safe, both within Dyalog Ltd and in our user community. I try to make small incremental changes, and give people plenty of opportunities to contribute and complain along the way.”

The most important skills for a person in Stine’s position are patience and empathy. Change can be difficult, even if it’s for the better – this is especially true at Dyalog Ltd, where Stine’s favourite part of our culture is the passion. “Every employee is passionate about the company and our product. Dyalog Ltd is not just a workplace, it is a family…a lifestyle. I try to guard that passion so that it never burns out, while feeding it new firewood in the form of good working conditions, influence on the product, and a collaborate leadership style.”

Stine works from our office in Copenhagen. It is here that her favourite ducks are – they are part of a flock of 400 mini ducks that Martina placed around the office as an April Fools joke!

When asked about her most significant project in her time at Dyalog Ltd, Stine replied “Since I became CEO, things stopped being about me. My main task is to make sure that everyone else has the chance to shine, so I have nothing that I have done on my own”. If she must identify her proudest achievement so far, it is getting everyone to arrive on time for meetings (sometimes even five minutes early!).

Even though Stine grew up with APL being the language of choice at home, she never really learnt it (despite trying multiple times), mostly because her interest lies more with people and processes. Helping people grow and making their lives easier makes Stine happy, so even though she is still being teased about her lack of APL skills(!), we can understand that she prioritises other things.

Stine is working on making Dyalog Ltd future proof. She aims to ensure that knowledge and skills are shared from the more experienced employees to the newcomers, so we can continue to operate and support our users for many years to come. We have many key people in the older generation of employees, and the challenge of externalising years of accumulated knowledge and experience is one that Stine has been happy to take on. Some of us have been with Dyalog Ltd for as long as Stine has been alive, and no single individual joining us today can possibly assume their roles without extensive mentoring and knowledge transfer. For Stine, playing role matchmaker and facilitator is both exiting and very rewarding. She plans to serve Dyalog Ltd for many years, continuing to focus on improving and simplifying our work lives, so that we can deliver a good product that remains in touch with the latest technological developments.

Outside work, Stine enjoys dancing and reading books, as well as taking care of her proudest achievement: her children. Long-standing members of the community might remember a Dyalog user meeting in Elsinore where she led a Zumba class every afternoon for the whole week; Stine still does Zumba twice a week, and it is one of the things that helps her to stay sane and in shape.

We have now had the pleasure of working with Bjørn for 20 years, so it seemed like an ideal opportunity to ask him to look back over the last two decades.

Bjørn first discovered APL when Gitte Christensen and Morten Kromberg invited him to participate in an APL course; he also used it in a few courses during his civil engineering degree.

Over the last two decades, Dyalog Ltd has grown from 8 employees to almost 30, has embraced evolving technology and trends, become a more geographically-distributed company with employees across multiple timezones, and seen a change of CEO. However, the combination of freedom and responsibility that Bjørn enjoys has not changed in this time. This has helped him in his role creating interfaces from APL to other APLs – more generally, developing tools that are not written in APL. For example, he wrote an interface from APL to ODBC so that APL user can access SQL databases. Bjørn derives great satisfaction from providing tools that customers need. His proudest achievement is the creation of Conga, Dyalog’s framework for TCP/IP communications (most new applications uses Conga directly or indirectly through other tools). There have been challenges too, such as developing his cryptography skills to a sufficient level to help colleagues and customers, but he has found that good spirits and persistence usually prevail in such situations.

Bjørn’s motivation at work remains his enjoyment in solving interesting problems and helping others. As he states, “I really like helping the customers”! He intends to continue in this role, although is now reducing his hours so that he can spend more time doing the things that he enjoys outside work, such as sailing in the summer and badminton in the winter. He’s also a very good dancer – his tango is legendary amongst his colleagues!

Bjørn is looking forward to many more years of serving Dyalog Ltd’s customers.

[Editor’s note: Morten started at the same time as Bjørn – his retrospective on how Dyalog Ltd and Dyalog have evolved since then will be published soon.]

Mike is marking his first year at Dyalog Ltd, so we asked him to reflect on his experiences and the journey so far.

Before joining Dyalog Ltd, Mike spent nearly a decade at Optima Systems in Crawley, West Sussex. Optima’s long-standing relationship with Dyalog Ltd meant that Mike was already familiar with many of the people and had even visited our Bramley office on several occasions. At Optima Systems, Mike’s primary role was in website design, where he developed several iterations of the company website. His responsibilities also extended to handling graphic design needs, SEO, social media, website hosting, email signatures, and print work. This was for both internal needs and clients requirements.

Mike’s introduction to being a member of Team Dyalog was rather intense, as he was thrust straight into Dyalog ’23 (the annual user meeting) in Elsinore, Denmark. He had previously attended Dyalog ’16 as a delegate, but this time he experienced it from the perspective of a Team Dyalog member! For Mike, the chance to spend time in Denmark and meet his new colleagues in person was invaluable, as for him online meetings can’t replicate the real-life connection. With his previous experience working alongside Dyalog Ltd in his former role, the transition was smoother and less scary than it might have been.

Mike has embraced the company culture. He finds the environment at Dyalog Ltd relaxed and collaborative, with a strong drive for success and a commitment to doing things properly that resonates throughout the company. The diversity of the team, with employees from various parts of the world, adds to the richness of the working environment, something Mike finds particularly interesting. The opportunity to travel, both for user meetings and internal meetings, has been a new and welcome experience for him.

Design remains Mike’s true passion, and his role at Dyalog Ltd allows him to indulge in this while also delving deeper into marketing. Although he had touched on marketing aspects at Optima Systems, he now has the chance to truly engage with it and bring his creative ideas to life. Good design remains his primary focus, but branding is another area that captivates him, and he’s eager to contribute to Dyalog Ltd’s success through his expertise.

When not working, Mike enjoys spending time at a local cinema that specialises in screening older films and titles not typically found in larger venues (the last one being the 1974 film The Conversation). Alongside his wife, who is from Canada, he also enjoys exploring cathedral cities, galleries, and museums. At home, Mike is an avid computer gamer and finds joy in playing with their two new cats, Esther and Edie.

During his first year at Dyalog Ltd, Mike has been involved in several key projects. He built the website for the new APL Forge competition and is eager to continue refining and expanding its reach. He also played a significant role in the rebranding and redesign of the website for the APL Challenge. Another major project has been developing a new company website, which is work that he began while still at Optima Systems. He’s also spent considerable time refining Dyalog Ltd’s branding, and is pleased with the results so far. His work in social media has seen him create images for various platforms, and he has ambitious plans to overhaul the company’s YouTube channels, aiming for a fully optimised and visually cohesive presence.

Reflecting on his first year, Mike says, “My experiences at Dyalog Ltd so far have been exciting, challenging, and at times stressful, but never dull. I believe I’ve joined the company at a very interesting point in its history, especially with Stine recently taking over as CEO. I love the travel opportunities and how engaged everyone is in pushing forward. I feel that I add value in ways that perhaps weren’t there before, and I’m eager to lift the company in any way I can. From designing a single icon to rebranding an entire competition, I believe I can make an important and lasting mark.”.

It has been a year since Abs joined Dyalog Ltd, and we asked him to look back over his first twelve months and his experiences so far.

“A whole year? The time has flown by! It has been an intense journey with a steep yet rewarding learning curve so far, but I can’t wait to see where it takes me.”

Abs joined Dyalog Ltd when the IT workload was at a peak due to the company’s growth. “Andy and Jason have been phenomenal in giving me the support and guidance I needed to make me feel like a part of the team. I have mainly been helping them to deal with day-to-day IT needs, such as setting up machines for new colleagues, dealing with queries and fulfilling colleagues requests, and configuring and general housekeeping of our servers and systems. This keeps me busy for a typical working day, but I have also been helping to implement some long-term plans involving Microsoft 365 that will shape the way we work, and, as Andy puts it, ‘pretty much anything else that needs to be done that no one else is able to do’! I like this description as I like to help wherever I can, even if it’s not in my area of expertise; learning about the subject and providing a solution feels super rewarding and motivating.”

Abs’ first few months were intense, as he found that there was a huge amount of information to absorb, but by committing himself and trying to become familiar with everything that IT uses to keep Dyalog Ltd going technically, Abs has become more confident in tackling issues that come his way. “I have also been making an effort to learn APL through weekly sessions with Adám. I often find myself naturally coming across APL when I work, so it’s important that I can understand the fundamentals. These sessions have been incredibly helpful in grasping the key concepts that make APL different and stand out from other languages, and it’s fun taking a deep dive into the product that we are all so passionate about.”.

When not working, Abs likes to play the guitar, travel, and enjoy the company and conversation of his friends. He stays active by playing badminton, and tries to visit the gym a few times a week.

“Overall, I have really enjoyed my first year with Dyalog Ltd. I really respect and admire my colleagues, and it fills me with pride to help fix their problems and make their lives easier (I hope!). You can tell everyone cares about the work we do and, more importantly, each other. You are treated as a person first and employee second, and that motivates me to do the best job I can.”

It’s been a year since Aarush joined us, and we asked him to look back over his first twelve months.

Aarush joined Dyalog Ltd after studying at VIT Vellore in India, where he received a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering. Forgoing his college placements in pursuit of working on the nitty-gritty of programming languages, Aarush found APL. The idea that if you can do mathematics with symbols, you can program with symbols as well, was something that Aarush found “legen-wait-for-it-dary”.

Most days, Aarush is involved with testing Dyalog, focusing on testing the primitives of the language with the test suite he created – ullu. The main objectives of ullu are to test the functionality of Dyalog’s primitives and enhance code coverage to ensure that users get the best quality code possible. Currently, ullu covers 10 primitives, and he’s working on extending this to cover more (all the rest of them!). A huge achievement in Aarush’s first year has been increasing code coverage, bringing many of the 10 primitives that he’s worked on so far to almost 100% coverage. He’s very excited to work on the interpreter, and is looking forward to running some experiments to investigate the merits of a proposal that might speed up Dyalog’s memory management system.

Apart from work, Aarush likes to travel. “Flights are cool but I still think the best way to explore a place is by walk or a road trip”. If it is accessible by foot, he’s likely to suggest walking there, often underestimating the amount of time and effort it might take (much to the chagrin of his friends). When not travelling, he enjoys watching F1, making and tasting new types of coffee, and playing his guitar.

As for Dyalog Ltd’s famous duck collection, Aarush’s favorite duck in the office is not one of the ones in the ducks-only bookcase, but rather one that’s in the kitchen – it’s the scrubbing brush! He thinks this is not only adorable but also very functional as a dish scrubber.

“Dyalog is the perfect fit for me as a workplace” he says. “I always imagined myself working at a company that is passionate about what they’re making and part of a team that is very close-knit, like a family. I can’t wait to build more and learn more with all the folks at Dyalog”.