I never was a big fan of internships, partially because all the exciting companies were far away from my little village in Bavaria and partially because I was too shy to apply. Only once I applied for an internship in Ireland as part of a school program. Our teacher assigned the jobs and so my friend got one at Apple and I ended up at a medium-sized IT distributor — let’s call them PcGo. More »

So I'm in a bit of a sentimental mood lately. Github got acquired by Microsoft. While I think the acquisition was well-deserved, I still wish it didn't happen. Let me explain. More »

When I opened Vim by accident for the first time, I thought it was broken. My keystrokes changed the screen in unpredictable ways, and I wanted to undo things and quit. Needless to say, it was an unpleasant experience. There was something about it though, that kept me coming back and it became my main editor. Fast forward ten years (!) and I still use Vim. Why is that? More »

This morning I woke up to the beeping noise of our oven’s alarm clock. The reason was that I tried to correct the oven’s local time the day before — and I pushed the wrong buttons. As a result I didn’t set the correct time, instead, I set a cooking timer… and that’s what woke me up today. More »

October is the perfect time to contribute to Open Source — at least according to Github and DigitalOcean. Because that's when they organize Hacktoberfest, a global event where you get a free shirt and lots of street cred for creating pull requests. More »

In the last few years, I've had the pleasure to work with a lot of talented Software Engineers. More »

I’ve written most of my code in dynamically typed languages such as Python or PHP; but ever since dabbling with Rust, I’ve developed a passion for static type systems. It began to feel very natural to me; like a totally new way to express myself. More »

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 »

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 »