Backend engineer at trivago, open-source maintainer, speaker. About me.

13th of October, 2011

On Hard Work

 Great people get shaped by their achievements There's Thomas Edison who developed countless prototypes before selling a single light bulb. The unemployed Joanne K. Rowling writing Harry Potter in a Cafe while caring for her child. Steve Wozniak creating the first personal computer in his spare time… More »

12th of February, 2010

Overkill – Java as a First Programming Language

 I recently talked to a student in my neighborhood about his first programming experiences. They started learning Java at school, and it soon turned out to be horrible. A lot of us learned to code in languages like BASIC or Pascal. There was no object orientation, no sophisticated file I/O and almost… More »

10th of January, 2010

Why I Love Text Files

 Text files are the single most important way we can communicate with computers. It's no coincidence that they are also the most vital way to interact with other human beings. What we can achieve with text files is invaluable: Write it once and refer to it whenever you want to get the message across … More »

8th of November, 2009

Running Legacy Code

 This short article deals with a severe problem in software development: bit rot. When switching to a new platform (for instance from Windows XP to Windows Vista/7), the programmers need to make sure that old bits of code run flawlessly. There are several ways to achieve this goal that will be discus… More »
« Next articles