Today we’re unveiling Dark and moving into private beta.

Backends today are too complicated to build. Dark is designed to massively reduce that complexity. Dark is a holistic programming language, editor, and infrastructure for building backends. You write in the Dark language, using the Dark editor, and your program is hosted on Dark’s infrastructure. As a result, you can code without thinking about infrastructure, and have safe instant deployment, which we’re calling “deployless”.

Dark in Action

Today we’re releasing two videos showing how Dark works. Ellen Chisa, our CEO, demonstrates how to build a backend application (an office sign-in app) in 10 minutes, showing how Dark works and how it’s used.

(We’re sorry the video player won’t full screen here, the one at https://darklang.com does! Or see Ellen’s talk as a blog post!)

An API endpoint from the demo with a live values & code references.

Next, watch Paul Biggar, our CTO, talk about the philosophy of Dark: why we designed Dark, and the details of the language, editor, and infrastructure. He’ll also show off how we make “deployless” safe with feature flags and versioning, and how Dark allows you introspect and debug live requests.

Who uses Dark?

During our private alpha, developers have built entire backends in Dark. Chase Olivieri built Altitude, a flight deal subscription site. Julius Tarng moved the backend of Tokimeki Unfollow to Dark for scalability. Jessica Greenwalt & Pixelkeet ported Birb, their internal project tracker, into a SaaS for other design studios to use.

We’ve seen our alpha users build backends for web and mobile applications, internal tools, Slackbots, Alexa skills, and personal projects. We’ve even started building parts of Dark in Dark, including our presence service and large parts of our signup flow.

Private Beta

Starting today, Dark is in private beta. During the private beta, we’ll be opening Dark in waves to many more people. If you have a project that is well scoped and you’re ready to get started, we can let you into the beta quickly (even immediately!).

Work at Dark

Building Dark has been a challenging and fulfilling journey, and we’re just getting started. We’re hiring for dozens of roles remotely (in US time zones) and in San Francisco. We have an inclusive culture, an important mission and values, and a transparent hiring process.

Learn more and check out our open roles: https://darklang.com/careers.

Thank you

It takes a lot to build a language, editor, and infrastructure. The last two years wouldn’t have been possible without the support of countless people. Our alpha users, who provided amazing feedback and filed approximately a million bugs. Our investors and advisors, who supported us from when this was just an idea, and held us accountable to our goals.

And most importantly, so many people have sent us ideas and encouragement on twitter and in person. Your support is everything 💯🔥🎉

Thank you!

Ellen, Paul, IanC, Alice, IanS, Sydney, Korede, Julian, and Dean