Matchstick v0.0.1 – Lighting the First Spark

Today I’m sharing something I’ve been thinking about for months: what if trading tools didn’t suck?

I’ve spent years watching smart people struggle with trading software that feels like it was built in 2005. Everything’s either locked to Windows, slow as molasses, or so complicated you need a PhD just to place a trade.

So I started building something different. Something that works the way modern software should work.

What Actually Shipped

Not much you can see yet. This is the foundation—the boring stuff that has to exist before the cool stuff can happen.

Think of it like this: you can’t build a house without pouring the concrete first. v0.0.1 is the concrete. No, it’s not glamorous, but it’s absolutely necessary.

Why I’m Building This

Every trader I know has the same complaints:

“Why is everything so slow?” You click a button, wait three seconds, then wonder if it worked. In markets that move in milliseconds, that’s not just annoying—it’s expensive.

Why does it keep crashing? Because trading platforms are built by committees, not people who actually trade. Fail fast and often. This is the antithesis of what Rust is built for. This is why I’m building Matchstick in Rust.

Rust helps us better express the errors we want to handle. So we can actually handle them. So we don’t crash all the sudden.

“Why does it only work on Windows?” Because apparently retail traders aren’t allowed to use Macs or Linux. Someone should tell the quants to slow down.

“Why is it so complicated?” Because trading platforms are built by committees, not people who actually trade. Rust is the best language for cross-platform development. It’s why I’m building Matchstick in Rust.

What Happens Next

I’m giving myself 12 weeks to build something worth using. Every Friday, I’ll ship something new and write about what I learned.

Some weeks will be big wins. Some weeks will be “my toddler refused to nap and I only got two hours of coding done.” Both are part of the story.

The goal isn’t perfection—it’s progress. Build something real, test it with real traders, and make it better every week.

Want to Follow Along?

I’ll be sharing everything—wins, failures, and the messy middle parts. If you’re curious about building trading tools that don’t make you want to throw your computer out the window, stick around.

This is just the beginning. But every big project starts with a single commit to an empty repository.

Matchstick v0.0.1 – Lighting the First Spark