About
Kushagra Sharma
@TheDarkArtist
I'm a technical founder and systems engineer. I build software, companies, and ideas — currently TDACorp.
I build tools I want to use. Mostly Rust, sometimes TypeScript. I like breaking things to understand how they work, then building better versions. Most of what holds my attention sits below the application layer — network security, systems programming, and the parts of an operating system most people never have to think about.
I start by understanding the problem. Not the solution someone else proposed — the actual problem. Then I build the simplest thing that could work.
I use Neovim because it forces me to understand my tools. I use Arch because I want control over my system. I write Rust because I got tired of debugging memory issues at 3 AM.
trajectory
How I got here
- 2026
Building TDACorp
Stopped thinking in repositories and started thinking in systems that outlive them.
- Founded TDACorp in 2025 — high-performance software for humans and machines.
- Now building it as the main thing rather than a side of the work.
- 2025
Found My Path
Learned that the years that felt wasted were the ones that built the perspective.
- After years that felt wasted, realized they gave me perspective.
- 2025 started differently — routine kicked in: morning runs, regular chats with friends.
- Applied for jobs for the first time ever (outside freelance), and it worked.
- Final interview with the CEO — "Are you into hacking?" I knew I was in.
- Got the job. Worked. Quit. Story for another time.
- Now building with clarity — not chasing noise, just shipping what matters.
- 2024
Lost In Terminal
Chose depth over visible progress, and stopped measuring a year by what it looked like on paper.
- Everyone was chasing internships, I was tuning Linux like a monk.
- Dived deep into hacking, networking, kernel development books.
- Started thinking I was good — then reality said, "Hold my man page."
- The more I learned, the more I realized how little I actually knew.
- It wasn't productive on paper, but it was the realest year I've had.
- 2023
Tried Everything
Found the edges of my own interest by walking to them — most of what I tried, I chose not to keep.
- Got curious about visuals — entered game dev with Unity and C#.
- Built a simple Android game: dodge-the-falling-stuff style.
- Tried Unreal Engine on Arch with 8GB RAM — ran, but barely.
- Tinkered with Blender — learned that 3D art is a whole new beast.
- Explored Android dev and Flutter alongside. Didn't ship much, but learned a lot.
- 2022
The Node Era
First real contact with Rust, and the first time losing taught me more than shipping did.
- Got into Node/React/Express. Built todo apps, blogs, e-commerce.
- Smart India Hackathon: ISRO problem with Django. Lost — couldn't math the trajectory.
- Stumbled upon Rust. Looked sexy. Also terrifying. Ran away.
- Could talk about almost anything — React to regex, Zig to zero-trust.
- Also flirted with Flutter. 2022 was not a monogamous year.
- 2021
Peak Distro Hopping
Rebuilding the same machine a dozen ways turned the operating system from a tool into a subject.
- Linux distro hopping like it was a personality trait.
- Garuda first — flashy, colorful. First taste of Arch world.
- Then Manjaro KDE. Less neon, more "I know what I'm doing" vibes.
- Fell deep into Django. Making generics my side hustle.
- Wanted to be ten different devs at once. Chaotic, exciting, confusing.
- 2020
COVID & Chaos
Became self-taught by default, and learned that unstructured time is only wasted if you waste it.
- COVID classes were background noise. Busy running terminals.
- Jumping between languages, frameworks, CLI tools. No roadmap. No end goal.
- Raw, chaotic exploration. Learned more by messing around than any class taught me.
- 2019
The Spark
One accidental install decided the next seven years.
- Moved to Jaipur for JEE prep. First time out of the nest.
- Accidentally installed Linux. Never looked back.
- First lines in Python — decided to automate everything.
- Switched to C because segfaults are character-building.
- Stumbled on the word 'kernel' — didn't get it, but wanted to hack it.
tdacorp
The company
TDACorp builds high-performance software for humans and machines. I founded it in 2025 and it's the main thing I work on now.
The short version of why: the problems I found most interesting kept being ones a single repository couldn't hold. Building a company is the version of that problem I hadn't solved yet.
Founding changed what I optimise for. Writing software for yourself rewards cleverness; writing it for a company rewards the choices that are still legible in a year, to someone who isn't you.
how i think
Positions
Read the source. Documentation lies.
Not because documentation is written dishonestly, but because it describes intent while the source describes behaviour — and the gap between them is exactly where the bugs you care about live. Documentation also ages silently; code does not.
Security isn't a feature. It's a requirement.
Features are negotiable and get cut under deadline. Treating security as one guarantees it is the thing that gets cut. The useful question is never whether something is secure, but what it is secure against and who decided that.
The best code is no code. The second best is code you understand.
Every line is a liability someone maintains later, and that someone is usually you with less context than you have now. I would rather ship something obvious and slightly longer than something clever I have to re-derive in six months.
If it can be automated, it should be.
Less about saving time than about removing the variance. A task done by hand is done slightly differently every time, and those differences are where things quietly break. Most of my tools exist because I did something twice and resented the second time.
thedarkartist
The name
TheDarkArtist has been my handle for long enough that it's become the name more people know me by than my own.
The "artist" part isn't a job title and was never meant to sit beside founder and engineer as a third profession. It's about temperament — the part of the work that's taste rather than correctness. Which tools feel right. Which abstraction is worth the weight. Why one implementation is satisfying and another that passes the same tests isn't.
- I've published packages to the AUR. Yes, I use Arch.
- I once wrote a SHA-1 cracker just to understand how it works.
- My .vimrc is longer than some of my projects.
- I think packet sniffing is a legitimate hobby.
- I prefer dark mode because I'm not a psychopath.
elsewhere
- GitHub@TheDarkArtist
- LinkedInin/thedarkartist
- X@TheDarkArtist02
- Emailkushagra.sharma@thedarkartist.in
- RésuméPDF
Verify my commits and packages, or send something encrypted.
- Primary key (.asc)
- 4EDDA134E18E9CEE3C500EB407EE4A5113C589F9
- AUR signing key (.asc)
- 0AD355085DF79157D5CD05C3F871B76C837E1BC4