Co-founder of Almadar. Designer of the Orb language.
Knowledge is freedom.
I've spent over two decades building software. Enterprise systems, national platforms, and tools that millions of people depend on daily. I've come to believe the way we build these systems is broken: it makes knowledge invisible.
There's a question I keep asking people, and the answer always unsettles them. Who owns the rules inside the software your organization depends on? These essays are my attempts at an answer.
I was born in Taif, Saudi Arabia, the city of roses. I lived in the United States from age five to eight. Both places left a mark on me.
Taif
Born here
Where I was born. The city of roses.
United States
Childhood · Pittsburgh 2012–19
I lived here from age five to eight. I came back for a master's in Health Information Systems at the University of Pittsburgh, and worked here from 2012 to 2019.
Riyadh
University · national systems
I studied Information Systems at King Saud University. Then I built national platforms that millions of people use every day.
Ljubljana
Family · Almadar
I live here now. My wife is from Slovenia. I co-founded Almadar here.
Four countries, four languages, one question.
Somewhere in your city, software is making decisions about people's lives. Nobody elected it. Nobody outside the development team can read its rules. I believe people have the right to understand the systems that govern them.
Imagine a world where the behavior of any app is explicitly defined and shareable with its users. I have attempted to create this in my programming language, Orb. You can see who can read your data and whether it leaves the system.
A handful of companies want to rent you intelligence forever. Almadar exists so you never have to. We make local models as useful as the big ones, and you own them.
I'm very curious. Languages are how I get to understand people, so I keep learning them: four human ones so far, and a programming language of my own.
I thrive in one-to-one conversations. Send me an email and we will schedule a call.