Software is a strange business: Software is expected to be free, especially when it’s on the web, yet FAAMG[1] engineers are known for absurdly high salaries. How do these two fit together?

[1]: FAAMG stands for Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google/Alphabet: All American tech companies, yet also the 5 most valuable companies in the world.

Another Bubble?

The Nasdaq Composite is a stock market index which leans towards information technology stocks. In the last 5 years, the Nasdaq has risen from 4.8k to 13.8k, meaning that any investment would have almost tripled, and an annual growth rate of 24%! (calculated on…

For many years, there was a strict hierarchy in my mind: Static languages like Java and C++ are cumbersome and verbose, and require me to write lots of redundant type names and boilerplate code, while dynamic languages such as Python are cool and awesome and productive because defining a new integer variable is as easy as writing “x = 1”.

However, I’ve come to realize that Python’s faster development cycle is actually due to being data-oriented, and that a static language like Kotlin can rival Python in terms of concise code and development speed. The reason some languages are painful…

A common topic on internet discussions is the practicability of computer science degrees. Students and industry complain they are not being taught actual job skills, while academics maintain that university should teach you a way of thinking, not any particular skill or technology.

I believe there could be a middle ground. At my university, attempts at imparting practical knowledge existed, but were extremely misguided. There was exactly one course about a specific programming language, but it was Ada, a language with exactly 0 hits on StackOverflow Jobs. A course on functional programming didn’t even teach me functional programming, but only…

Google Code Jam is a worldwide online programming competition which draws 30,000 to 60,000 contestants each year. Contestants solve a set of programming problems within a usually 2.5-hour-timeframe.

I love the excitement that each round brings, and that feeling of submitting a correct solution just minutes from the deadline. I also feel like I learn a lot of clever tricks each time. And while I don’t think I’m good enough to make top 25 and participate in the World Finals, I have placed 326th before, which is still in the top 1% of contestants.

In this article I will present…

A then-11-year-old boy I’m friends with approached me several year ago:

Hey Jan if you can can you show me how to mod ydkj game files with my own music and stuff?

Well how could I say no! And so began my quest to reverse-engineer files for You Don’t Know Jack Vol. 3 — a game that came out the year I was born. A game that will only run with a resolution of 640 x 480 x 16 colors (This is the VGA standard). A game where the internal volume slider is broken on my machine. But I did…

While asynchronous programming (AP) is standard fare in JavaScript and baked into the design of Go as goroutines, many Python programmers are new to this concept. The central idea is to achieve concurrent execution of multiple functions in a single program thread. While one function waits for an outside event, such as getting I/O from the web or a database, another function is executed to fill the otherwise-wasted time.

Some AP functionality has been available since Python 3.5, however key functions such as asyncio.run are only available from 3.7 …

My first job out of college will be at TNG Tech in Munich! They are a tech consultancy, meaning other businesses come to them to get advice and custom software. My preconceived notion was that tech consulting was about advising companies on business strategies while leaving any implementation to others, but TNG’s focus is mostly on developing software for other companies (essentially contracting).

One thing that struck me was the doctorate rate which this job opening claims is around 60%, jeesh! I heard of credential inflation before, but this is at a whole other level — is a PhD already…

Hello world! I’m a 22-year-old German 🇩🇪 guy who just graduated university with a Master’s degree in computer science. In this blog I will talk about topics related to software engineering, and potentially self-improvement.

I began developing my interests in software and programming in my youth. I started writing my first programs at the age of 12, using Borland Delphi (yes, I know). At the age of 15 I already developed small games and helped my parents’ business by setting up automatic print jobs.

Python is my favorite and strongest language as it is extremely readable and versatile. Speed may…