About
Hello! My name is Victor, I'm the author of this project. You can find contact info on my personal website. Feel free to reach out 😊
The origin of this project
The origin of this project is double:
I wanted to learn Optics
I have been teaching myself optics, and I've been sometimes frustrated by approximations and general lack of rigor in the way the field is being taught. As someone with a strong software background, but a total noob in optics, approximations like sin(x) = x seem to make sense if you're Isaac Newton designing a telescope with pen and paper in the 17th century, but today I think non linear optimization has gotten so remarkably powerful that we should start there. Teaching optics with ideal equations like 1/u + 1/v = 1/f or the lens maker equation that are never true in real life is in my opinion misleading. At least to me it was super confusing until I let go of it and embraced the non linearity of Snell's law! In my opinion, those equations should be presented as the over-simplified approximate but historically useful model that they are, not as Chapter 1 of how lenses work. It's not! Spherical aberration is not part of physics, it's part of engineering. It's a consequence of solving a non linear system too approximately!
Also, I strongly believe that you only truly understand something once you've programmed a computer to do it. I am fascinated by optics, and Torch Lens Maker is a learning project for me. Every time I add a new feature it deepens my understanding of the physics of it. For example, what is an image? I know what an image is for a computer, it's a 2D grid of pixel data... right? Yeah sure, but in optics it's totally different! I have not yet found an optics textbook that satisfyingly defines what an image is. The best I got was in a Khan Academy video where it was said "an image is where rays of light converge". Still, I think it's more subtle than that (sometimes they don't converge, and still an image is formed)!
Recurse Center
In Winter 2024, I attended the Recurse Center, a technical retreat for programmers. At the Recurse Center, you become a better programmer by working at the edge of your abilities, learning generously and working on your own projects. Torch Lens Maker was my main project during my batch, and I was able to work on it full time for 12 weeks, making great progress and having great fun! Now that my batch has ended, I'm looking for a way to keep working on it because I believe it has great potential. I don't want all lenses in the future to be designed with 5 figures closed-source commercial software, we can do better! Look at how machine learning enjoys state of the art open-source tooling. Let's do the same for optics!
Funding
I've been working on this project on my own time and money for a few months now (as of early 2025). I'd love to keep working on it as much as possible!
I am looking for sponsorship, contracting or donations to be able to keep working on it. If you are interested in sponsoring open-source development of Torch Lens Maker, please reach out or make a donation! Thank you 💚
You can also find personal contact info on my website. Feel free to reach out 😊
Newsletter
If you want to receive project updates by email, I've setup a mailing list. I'll send a few emails per year at most.