My Journey

A written overview of my IT career

The early days of my career

I was born in 1982 and at the age of 12 my dad bought me a personal computer. It was an Intel 80286 - and the world changed forever. I "entered the game" another 2 years later: Writing code in Basic and Pascal. DOS died; Windows came. I heard the sound of dial up connections, learned HTML, surfed the NetscapeNavigator at its peak in 1996 and learned JavaScript. I actually earned some really good money working at an early web agency - transforming templates into websites day and night. During the whole "dot com bubble" i still earned my money with web programming, i witnessed AJAX being born, Flash peaking and dying, and JavaScript being revived.

During the late 90s i gradually became a solid programmer: I did all types of interpreted and compiled Basic dialects up to Visual Basic, worked with Assembler, with C and from Pascal to Delphi. At the age of 17 i finally wrote a two component client/server freight planning software for a logistic company in Delphi - and i felt satisfied when this software was actually used by real people. I learned what it felt like to "ship software" and decided to start a solid IT career.

Lessons learned

I see the long road we've come and i have a good understanding of why we are here. A lesson learned is that the constant noise of the ecosystem makes it hard to see the real game changers while they are happening. When new ideas gained traction or paradigms started to change the way things were done, it often didn't feel like ground breaking changes - at least it felt no different than all the other stuff no one would remember one or two years later.
Object oriented programming, for instance, was an academical concept, used in Simula since the 1960's. Classes, instances, late binding, encapsulation. But it was just not relevant for years until its ideas slowly creeped into many existing languages. For me it was switching from PASCAL to Delphi and i can say i was there when it changed everything for the average coder.

My studies

After highschool i started studying computer science at the university of Darmstadt. My studies took place from 2003 until 2010. I added Java to my toolbox, but most working hours were spent with PHP 3 to 5.
I developed something really cool, which did not have a name back then. I used it to edit content of webpages dynamically. I worked really hard on it for over 2 years. When Typo and Wordpress flooded the marked i learned that such a thing was actually called a CMS and i recognized that Wikipedia will never list me as the inventor. But i can cope with that as i still value the time i worked on this project and for myself i consider this to be a true invention - i was just a bit too late. It was then when i realized that my coding skills had to become better and it was then when i learned about things like software patterns.

During the main study period i focussed on three things:

• IT Security, which gave me a deep insight into protocols and networking.
• Computer Graphics, which led to an exciting diploma thesis at the GRIS (graphic interactive systems group), where i worked for the first time with the rather young GPGPU technology and solved the three dimensional heat equation on NVidias CUDA framework.
• Bionics, which was my minor subject. I attended a rather demanding but interesting lecture on radio biophysics. I got into contact with the biophysics working group at the GSI Helmholtzzentrum. These guys, located directly at the ion beam accelerator ring near Darmstadt, were working on research topics around cancer treatment with particle beams. And i had the chance to contribute code to a mature treatment planning software that was written in C - while at the same time diving into a physical/medical problem domain.

Languages, Frameworks and the problem domain

Another thing i learned in those days was the fact that learning a language is not as hard as learning frameworks. I was skilled in C++ and in Delphi but it took me weeks to figure out how OpenGL worked. There were bindings for C++ and Delphi but the framework took way more time to understand and explore.
And there was another dimension to writing purposeful software: Writing a game engine involved some serious math. I realized that for real world problems the language and the frameworks are the tools, but it can sometimes be much harder to truly understand the problem domain. Granted, most of the times you need only the basics of your skillset. But writing outstanding software is more than plugging preexisting components together. At some point you need to solve something on your own.
I have a very special opinion on what a senior developer is and in addition to all the common aspects i have a strong emphasize on the ability to create something truly new for your problem domain. So i learned that many skilled programmers called themself senior developer, but some were more equal than others.

I also worked two years for Lexmark Germany during my studies. All these experiences led me into the direction of pure software development and contributed to my interest in algorithms, data structures, complexity analysis and filled my mathematical toolbox. At the same time i had gained insight in academic, governmental and enterprise working situations.
At the end of 2010 i left university and joined flinc, a small, visionary start up developing a ride sharing platform. I learned Ruby and became a seasoned Ruby on Rails programmer. During the next years i had the privilege to work with great people.

Where am i today?

My current journey in software development is not centered around languages or frameworks anymore. Learning a language is a matter of hours to days; likewise Frameworks a matter of weeks up to months. Also, the problem domain as well is not my primary focus: I have worked through some tough domains already. My personal focus is on architecture and the actual development process. It is centered around the question what it actually needs to get a product finished with as least dependencies as possible. What it takes to build strong teams. Hiring the right people, using the best tools available, investing in growth. Good software is developed by smart individuals, having bright ideas, strong teams with a clear vision and within sound organizational structures.
This is why i - over 20 years later - still work hands on developing software and leading teams to success. It's just fascinating for me when creativity, knowledge, will and time are poured in a project and working software emerges.