This time: fixing the gas crisis — We haven’t had hot water since we moved into my beautiful 1910 house. This confused the landlord, who tested that the system worked before he added a smart temperature control system. A thermostat for us laymen, but it has a remote, so it’s smart home automation now. I’m glad that…

And make burnout a distant memory even in times of high stress — I enjoy working in general, and programming, in particular, is a great job once you find your own rhythm. Over the past ten years, I have worked plenty of real jobs and odd jobs, and I believe I have found a good path through work and life by now —…

And make your own life better, as much as everyone’s who comes after you — It’s Monday morning, and you are sitting back down at your desk. Up in front of you is the spaghetti code for the system you didn’t build, but are asked to maintain from now on. The original code was written by the trainee, under half-guidance from the guy who planned…

I save hours thanks to these tools, time that could easily be wasted. — The tools I will mention in this post are pretty specific to my world of tech, productivity, and coding — but they are so important that I would not want to live without either of them. ReSharper ReSharper is one of these tools that are too expensive to not buy them…

For fun and giggles, and hours of wasted time — Programming is hard to learn and harder to teach, apparently. I’ve been in this industry for a decade now, and I have experienced some great examples of horrible explaining — so let’s just have some fun with a “please don’t do this” kind of post. Repeat what you just said Ideally, you start off with…

A much more important skill as far as I am concerned — What on earth?, I can hear you think, why would anyone want to work for less money than they could? But once you think about it, there are plenty of times in life when you don’t want to ask for more money but less. Think of this scenario: You are…

And it only got to stay after I learned of a hidden config option — Welcome! Today’s post has a double intent: To show you a great productivity plugin you may not be aware of, and to talk about the importance of giving your (power) users the option to configure your product. The tool I am talking about is called TabNine, and it’s amazing. If…

Not that I have any, but still. — I still remember the first line of code I ever wrote, which was increasing an integer in a game called Clonk Rage, to make bigger explosions. Then, my character died, because the explosion radius was larger than his throwing distance. Then, I increased the next integer and suddenly, my character…

Good things only stay that way if you don’t depend on them too much. — I am a programmer by trade, and I love that profession, but what I love even more is that I am not fully dependent on it to survive. I make a pretty solid side income these days from my tools and manual labor, and I get paid in both cold…