In 2003, at age 12, I used a computer connected to the internet at a Telkom Indonesia office. I was still in elementary school, and that was the very first time I typed a query into Google. Back then, I was only used to static electronic devices like game consoles and VCD players, so when I searched for something online, it felt like the machine actually understood me. I knew the pictures I was looking at did not exist on that local computer and were somehow sent from somewhere else. It was an incredible "aha" moment. The following year, I got my first computer, an Intel Pentium III. It was amazing even though it wasn't connected to the internet, and I mostly spent my time doing fun things on Microsoft Paint.
Day after day, I kept questioning how things worked until my instinct for engineering finally sparked in a corner of my junior high school classroom. I wondered how a "cable could send data from a computer to a phone, and vice versa." As soon as I got home, I cut open a USB cable I normally used, only to find ordinary copper wires inside. All I knew was that cables were meant for electricity. I couldn't understand how pictures, videos, music, and documents could possibly transfer through plain copper. That was the exact moment I started digging deeper to find out what was actually going on beneath the surface.
By high school, I had written my first-ever HTML page, Visual Basic programs, a simple game using RPG Maker and Ruby, and even a basic antivirus. The antivirus worked simply by comparing a CRC32 HASH with a database to detect harmful files. From that point on, I never stopped learning about how electronic devices function and how software interacts directly with hardware.
When I entered university, I started writing software in C/C++ and Java, which allowed me to build more professional websites and games. For my final project, I developed a tower defense game featuring a simple AI system powered by A* pathfinding. The real excitement came in 2014 when I joined my first commercial project to create a mobile promotional game. A year later, working on a 3D visualization website gave me my first true taste of financial freedom as a young man.
Over the following years, I gained extensive experience across various projects heavily reliant on C/C++ and Java. The most fundamental leap in my skills happened in 2015 while developing a visual scripting language written in C++, followed closely by my involvement in building an operating system based on the Linux kernel.
As we continued to grow from project to project, a monumental turning point arrived when I had to define Tohjiwa's core values. I tried to answer one simple question: "What is the most valuable thing that can be done in a simple way?"
As I wrote at the time:
"Helping a grandmother recover from the flu, helping a mother take care of a younger brother, and making sure a father can keep his family happy."
We deeply believe there is dignity in every cita-cita, and because of that, we are fully committed to supporting everyone in achieving theirs.
Ultimately, this means being a small part of something that can save a family or help someone reach their cita-cita. We will always find the best way to be an integral part of humanity. It was then that I realized “Tohjiwa is not a conventional technology company. We are simply a part of the people, the communities, and every cita-cita, providing the exact understanding and care that allows anyone to grow.”
We have always pushed to do more, dedicating our resources to drive continuous progress.
Today, at Tohjiwa Research, we are working on a wide range of exciting projects spanning from AI, Algorithms, C Standard Libs, Data Containers, Shell and Kernel.
Yet, our story has always been about humans, and humanity remains our ultimate center of innovation.
