Hey there, I’m Adithya.

As of today, ATLAS is officially real. It took a lot to get here and we can’t wait to see where things go. For transparency and keeping us committed, here’s the plan we have for ATLAS that we will do our best to provide for all of you.

Systems programming is a field concerned with building software that other programmers rely on. It’s about creating abstractions and tools that sit low in the stack, with a strong focus on performance, reliability, and a deep understanding of the underlying platform, no matter what that may be.

In practice, systems software often means programming languages, databases, operating systems, game engines, web servers, low-level libraries etc. written in a language like C(++), Rust, or Zig. However, systems is defined by the mindset, not the application - for example, a frontend framework like React, the low-latency code running a multiplayer game, or the software that powers a collaborative editor’s seamless yet correct merges are problems that need systems thinking to solve well.

Ultimately, the core idea is to foster a culture dedicated to the craft of programming and for students to develop a curosity for what makes complex technology tick.

Objectives
WhatsApp Community
One of the primary inspirations of our efforts is Arcane Systems Reading Group. Their WhatsApp group is a huge wealth of knowledge and I’m very fortunate to be a part of it.

We want to encourage the same in our own community and thus, we have a discussion group, where me and Nikhil post links alternately. This is a great way to start conversation and keeps things somewhat regular.

We plan to have an active forum of discussion, in our WhatsApp community. Join our WhatsApp if you haven’t already. Members are encouraged to send cool links that they find elsewhere and start discussions that way.

Missing Semester
An initial series of workshops on dev tools such as docker, git, terminals, regular expressions, debuggers etc. We’ll be diving deep into how these technologies work, and then an overview of how to get up and running with these tools.

Projects
Systems programming is not a spectator sport, it can only be truly appreciated when you get your hands dirty. We’ll have a 5 week mentorship program where a team of mentees collaborate and build a curated project selected by us, with weekly checkins. These weekly checkins will be done to ensure that mentees are on the right track, the things they learned and what they’ve done so far. At the end of these 5 weeks, the mentees present to an open forum which will include all of the club members as well as any guest evaluators we invite externally.

Technical Talks
We want to bring in experts from the industry to deliver rich deep dives into systems projects and problems that arise while trying to build below the abstraction.

We at ATLAS are so excited to bring this to you and we want to do our very best to foster a culture of learning and community around our mutually shared love for systems.

We thank you for coming along for the ride.