It is the last day of the year 2025. It's dark outside as I sit down to write this. Everyone in the house is still asleep. I don't feel like writing this. I'm not in the mood to look back or reflect, nor does it feel like there is much to reflect on.This was probably the most demanding year in my life so far. Not because many good or bad things happened. It was just demanding in almost every area of my life on any given day. I don't know if this is good or bad. I may know in a year or ten.There is a good chance that sometime today, someone will ask my how my year was....

This was my yearly theme of 2025 already, but I did not follow through with it. I want to give this another shot this year, because I think it is an important theme. I'm writing about it in public to hold myself accountable, hopefully.Naturally this theme, like all themes, is adaptable and can be bent. It mainly acts as a guide. I'll remain curious throughout the year and adapt my goals depending on where the year will take me.However, as a guiding principle, I'll state here that connection needs to happen with other people and that it is preferable for it to happen in person....

The other day, I learned about mood camera on Jasper's blog. In the last couple of days, I've been having a lot of fun with it.There are a lot of camera apps the allow you to take photos with a retro filter or apply it afterwards, and I've like this a lot ever since I started using Instagram (back then it was iOS only and none of my real-life friends had ever heard about it). In the last couple of years I used VSCO a lot, but have grown somewhat tired of it recently.Mood Camera change that. It's not because of the filters, though, but because of the random mode it offers....

When I started to write things on the internet when I was 16 years old, it was mostly oddball thoughts of a late-developing teenager and pictures I took with my digital camera. I've tried several forms of writing for websites I maintained since. Of course, I had a link-blog back in the day when everyone wanted to be Gruber. I had german and english websites, in some of those I tried to write more professional and looked into journalism-inspired posts.The domain you're reading this on now has been the one that was around the longest I think, and it never had a very clear concept....

Here's something I strongly believe: Small Pull Requests might take extra effort by the author to achieve, but they always pay off in productivity. I might elaborate more in the future, but that's the basic idea.Creating small Pull Requests is not always easy and straightforward. It requires more thinking, planning ahead and empathy towards your coworkers than just bundling all your changes into one big chunk....

Today marks the completion of my 34th year on this planet. I don't have 34 life lessons or things I learned in the past year that I can pull out of my sleeve, unfortunately.Here's one thing I learned, though: Even if things don't make sense, just keep going. In his famous Stanford speech, Steve Jobs said you can only connect the dots looking backwards, and he's right about that. It has been probably 10 or more years since I first heard this speech, but only now I start to understand it.A lot of things will not make any sense if you are in the midst of them....

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a podcast episode by Ryan Peterman (which I didn't know until then, but highly recommend if you're interested in programming, organizations and career development) with Jake Bolam, who is an IC8 (Principal Engineer) at Meta. I enjoyed the entire episode a lot and would recommend listening to it, but one idea in particular stood out to me.Jake mentioned that he always approves all Pull Requests he reviews. He goes through them, he notes his remarks, but he always approves them....

2024 has been an intense year for me. It stretched me in ways I never expected: more stress, more growth, more life squeezed into twelve months than I thought possible. It felt both endless and fleeting, as if it lasted three years and only three months, all at once.There’s plenty to reflect on, but this post isn’t about deep reflection. That will come later and I might share it or keep it private. Today, I’m simply taking inventory....

As of November 2024, I have officially transitioned to Engineering Management.I acted as a stand-in after our previous Engineering Manager moved on for a while. In the beginning of November, I've asked my manager if we could make it official: I'm no longer an IC, for now at least[^1].This post serves two purposes:To document this major change. It’s a personal marker for reflection, capturing how I feel now so I can revisit it in the future and see what’s changed.To share what I learn on the way, much as I’ve done with programming....

I’ve recently relocated to Denmark from Germany, and even though its a direct neighbor, there are some things that are vastly different.I want to write those things down when I notice them and while they are still new and exciting, before I get used to them.You may have noticed that I was very optimistic and labelled this article “Part 1”, indicating that this will be an ongoing series. I really want this to become a series. Maybe it will happen. If you read this a year after it was published and there is no second part to this, please do annoy me about it....