Quest

During all this, I experienced, quite by accident, the joy of people using software I created. And when I looked back on all my other projects. At best I had made them ‘barely usable’ for me, at worst I had dropped them halfway working. I was always fantasizing about: people happily playing the games I create or people using programs I created to make their life easier. So I started looking for a solution by studying topics like: startups, marketing, lean startup, devops, lean manufacturing, …...

Topics of interest: communication leadership management company culture startup culture psychological safety values (core / aspirational) principles personality motivation positive psychology

Topics of Interest: memory techniques speed reading mind mapping note taking learning education expertise

I was still studying software engineering at the university. While watching some random conference videos, I came across conference talks about software leadership and teamwork. And suddenly I realised: “software development is a team sport”. Software was like group assignments at school. This thought was horrifying! In all my years in school, I can only remember one group assignment that was joyful. All the others were horrible experiences. I’d rather worked alone, even if I had to do 3-5 times the work....

When I was about 12 years old, I bought a Java book with my first allowance. With books and the internet, I taught myself how to code. Initially I recreated small games, but over time also started creating small utility programs for myself. I programmed by myself for years. I learned, the need for maintainable code, the hard way. I was building this game my brother and I came up with....