When I was around 12, I set myself the goal to become a professional programmer. I can tell, because at this time I made the conscious decision to use my right hand to control the mouse — even though I'm left-handed. My reasoning was, that if I ever had to help out a colleague with a computer proble… More »
Let me first point out the obvious: yes, the title is a little sensationalist. Also you might be asking why I should be entitled to talk about the future of Rust. After all, I'm neither part of the Rust core team, nor a major contributor to the Rust ecosystem. To that I answer: why not? It's fun to … More »
One common systems design task in interviews is to sketch the software architecture of a URL shortener (a bit.ly clone, if you may). Since I was playing around with Rocket – a web framework for Rust – why not give it a try? More »
People look confused when I tell them about my passion for algorithms and data-structures. Most of them understand what a Programmer is doing, but not what Computer Science is good for. And even if they do, they think it has no practical relevance. Let me show you with a simple example, that applied… More »
Programming has many faces. It is the science of structured thinking. It is the art of eloquent expression. It teaches you to be humble when you look at other peoples' fascinating work. Most of all, it teaches you a lot about yourself. While the syntax may change, the concepts will not. More »
For as long as I can think, religious flamewars have infected computer science. Having arguments about technical topics can be healthy, but flamewars are not. I'm sick of it. I'm fed up with people telling me that their work environment is oh-so better, faster and so on. That's fine, but it doesn't … More »
My geography teacher once told the story of her first lecture at University. As an introduction, her professor asked the class to draw a map of Germany without any help and as accurate as possible. To her surprise, she was not able to fill the map with much detail. Even the shape of the country was … More »
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 »
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 »
A little code snippet that people need very often. More »