Before the First Commit

Some projects begin with an idea.

MechLang began with frustration.

While preparing for JEE Organic Chemistry, I often found myself spending as much time deciphering reaction mechanisms as I did understanding them. Poorly printed diagrams, inconsistent layouts, and static representations made already difficult concepts even harder to follow. When I searched for better visualization tools, many of the most capable ones were hidden behind paid software.

For a while, I accepted that this was simply how chemistry was taught.

Then I started asking a different question.

Why should chemistry only be communicated through static diagrams?

Programming had already changed the way I thought about solving problems. Instead of seeing reaction mechanisms as drawings, I began wondering whether they could become structured representations—something that both humans and computers could understand.

What if reaction mechanisms could be written as code?

What if diagrams were no longer the source of truth, but something generated from a deeper representation?

At that point, I didn't know what the language would look like.

I didn't know how the parser would work.

I didn't know whether the idea was even practical.

All I had was a question that refused to leave my mind.

Looking back, that question mattered far more than any line of code that followed.

Every parser rewrite, every rendering bug, every architecture decision, and every new feature can ultimately be traced back to this single thought:

Can chemistry be represented better?

This journal is the story of trying to answer that question.

Reflection

Before every repository is created, there is usually a question that makes creating it feel necessary.

This was mine.

I didn't begin by trying to build a programming language.

I began by trying to understand whether chemistry could be communicated in a better way.

Everything else grew from there.

What Changed

Recognized the limitations of static chemistry diagrams.
Began exploring the idea of representing reaction mechanisms as structured data.
Defined the question that would eventually become MechLang.

Looking Ahead

Ideas become real the moment they're written down.

The next step was to find out whether this one could become code.