“Getting paid to write Open-Source is probably a Dream for many Developers”

Chen Kasirer is a software engineer at ETH Zurich. As more code is now written by AI- often for other AI- he says it is the human side of software as a craft that still gives him that warm and fuzzy feeling. In this interview, Chen shares his perspective on the beauty of open-source and why human creativity remains at the heart of building technology.

Chen Kasirer at the COMPAS Association meeting in the Robotic Fabrication Lab. Picture by COMPAS Association

Hi Chen. You have a background in computer science and a wide range of professional experiences. What led you to focus your career on software development within the AEC sector?

It actually happened by chance, like most other things I’ve done in the past. I wasn’t specifically aiming for the AEC sector - I was doing Python development at an automotive company and really enjoyed the dynamic nature of the language and its many open-source projects. I was looking for a job in Zurich and when I saw the ad I was instantly intrigued by the opportunity to work on open-source projects. Getting paid to write open-source is probably a dream for many developers out there and I’m super grateful to be able to do that at Gramazio Kohler Research (GKR), the Chair of Architecture and Digital Fabrication at ETH Zurich.

At Gramazio Kohler Research, you contribute to an environment where people from very diverse disciplines collaborate. How does this interdisciplinary setting influence your work as a software engineer?

I absolutely love it. It's incredibly inspiring to work alongside so many smart, creative, and artsy people - makers and fabricators. I've been here for over three years now, and it still never ceases to amaze and humble me how capable everyone around here is. It really inspires me to want to explore sides of myself I hadn’t tapped into before - for example, creating things that are aesthetically pleasing. It has definitely been beneficial not just for my professional growth, but for my personal development as well.

You are involved in the COMPAS Framework and were part of founding the COMPAS Association. How has this initiative evolved over time?

It's a slow but important process - making COMPAS independent of the NCCR DFAB and ETH Zurich. We all work on it “on the side,” so to speak, though I often see it as an inherent part of my role at GKR. The professors are very supportive and genuinely believe in the initiative, which makes a big difference. Finding the right things to do is a challenge, but there's a real sense that I’m part of something meaningful and potentially far-reaching. We've had a few successful events that were a lot of fun to organize and be part of: events like the Developer Day, Industry Day, and other smaller meetups. COMPAS is a community-driven project, and for me, building that community around it seems like the most important part.

Academia meets Industry in the Innosuisse project at ERNE. Picture by Gramazio Kohler Research

You currently work on an Innosuisse project which involves collaboration with the Swiss company ERNE. In your view, what makes this industry-academic partnership particularly fruitful?

For me, it’s the way industry and academia balance each other. Companies like ERNE and cadwork bring decades of industry experience and expertise, which are essential for grounding and validating the hypotheses and results of our research. Their resources and willingness to collaborate are also what make these projects possible in the first place. On our side, since we’re not a business player, we have the freedom to work with a broad range of companies - often even direct competitors. That neutrality allows us to bring people together and build a more complete picture of the challenges the industry faces. A good example is our Timber Sounding Board, where we regularly sit down with key figures from the Swiss timber industry to share, demonstrate, and discuss future plans. These two sides complement each other well. That balance - between practical expertise and independent perspective - is what makes the collaboration effective. It helps us work toward shared goals, like developing sustainable solutions that can one day be widely accepted in and truly benefit the whole industry.

In your personal description on the GKR website I read that you like "thoughtful software design." What does that look like?

For me, thoughtful software design means writing code that’s easy for other people to read, refactor, and build on. I see this as the ultimate goal of good software engineering. At the risk of sounding a bit pretentious, I think you can tell when code has been written with care - crafted for a human audience, with complexity tucked away behind the right amount of abstraction. Not too much, not too little - just enough. It’s a dynamic process full of compromises, never really finished, and with no single right way to do things. With more and more code now being written by AI - often also for AI - the human side of software as a craft is what still gives me this warm and fuzzy feeling. Probably a geeky answer, but honestly, that’s the kind of thing that gets me excited.

For Chen, software design is a dynamic process full of compromises. Picture by Matthias Helmreich

Open-source development plays a significant role in your work. What motivates you to contribute to open-source projects, and how do you see their impact on the future of AEC technologies?

Open-source allows people to put forward their take on a problem and say, “here’s my solution, you’re welcome to use it”. It’s not just about competition or finding the best answer, maybe there isn’t one. It's about offering different approaches and letting the community decide what works for them. A take I personally find very wholesome and is part of the beauty of open-source. Over time, this dynamic tends to encourage quality, clarity, and shared ownership, but it also leaves room for creativity and diversity in how problems are solved.

So it’s definitely the sense of being part of a community which gets me when working on open-source projects. There’s something very validating about discussing competing ideas respectfully, agreeing, disagreeing, and finding compromises. It really brings out the human side of software development, which is something I’ve always found appealing. In the AEC industry, I’d personally attribute many of the challenges we’re trying to address to proprietary tools and closed ecosystems. From my perspective, open source is a key ingredient for building more sustainable, widely accepted solutions that people can actually work on together.

Looking ahead, what developments or opportunities in computational design or software engineering excite you most?

Don’t say AI, don’t say AI, don’t say AI. No, but seriously: using LLM-based generative AI tools to build software both excites and terrifies me. The sheer volume of code that can now be produced in minutes is unbelievable, and the implications for writing software as a team have kept me busy over the past few months. The threshold for creating things has dropped dramatically, and I’m genuinely excited to see what kind of developments will come from people who weren’t previously proficient - or simply not interested - in the details of coding. I still have a lot of questions about maintainability, the human aspects, and accountability... but not many answers yet. I think it will be mostly fun.