Hello World!

As a first post I’d like to reflect on where I’m coming from and what this new blog is about…

The OG: Sergej Ferlich Blog #

Es geht um die Entwicklung von Software und allem was dazugehört.
— Sergej Ferlich Blog, 2010

This was one of the first sentences when I started writing blog posts in 2010. I was just starting out as a software dev and you can tell by the other posts I wrote back then that it was a different world I was living in.

Here are a few things I blogged about:

Is it possible to force an Integer overflow in Python?
Solving my LAN issues by changing the MTU
Avoid Spam by using GMail addresses including a + character (I still use this by the way)
A few posts regarding my go-to IDE back then: KDevelop
Implementing Plugins with C++ and Qt

I worked as a C++ dev during the day and tried a number of private projects using C# and Python. One of the projects was about creating a Media client with a modular architecture that could be extended to include different sources like Youtube or Last.fm. The project never left its prototype stage, but in the end I worked on something similar when I implemented a music box for my son many years later.

Growing out of my dev days: Yet another IT blog #

I would like to lay down some general thoughts and experiences on how to work efficiently as a developer.
— YETIblog, 2013

After a few silent years I was in the game again. Now using Wordpress as an engine to fuel the blog. You can tell that I grew as a dev, in fact at that time I was leading a small team of junior devs and were given permission to test the waters on how dev work could be improved upon within my company back then.

The topics are much more about general concepts and ideas how to improve as a dev:

Communication in enterprise teams
Writing and hosting my own services
Continuous Integration and why it’s such a big deal

I was working on many more projects back then: Creating my own IRC bots, tinkering with a Raspberry Pi, supporting my Basketball team with a service to visualize our playbook, CxxProf, writing software to integrate with my Concept 2 rowing ergometer and by 2017 I also started to get more and more into home automation.

Altogether I wrote more than 90 articles in 10 years. It’s not much, but it’s certainly more than nothing.

The new thing: Build🔁Deploy🔁Repeat #

So here we are. After a few years of silence I thought it’s time to get back into blogging again. There is too much interesting stuff in my head and I need to get it out somehow. Why not continue with one of the older blogs then? In the end I was happy with wordpress.com as a service - they provide a platform where the writer can concentrate on what’s most important: Writing. On the other side Wordpress is a monster - do I really want to use a rich, but slow web-only service?

I’m about to write a tech blog after all. Writing Markdown is second nature, using Git, CI/CD and Docker is what I do as my daily driver. I’ve used Jekyll and Hugo before, so why not go that direction? Nobody needs yet another a WYSIWYG editor when there’s VSCode with a number of useful plugins to write good markdown.

So where am I now? Since 2017 my professional role shifted more and more into management. In the end tech played almost no role anymore, it was all about handling personnel, staffing projects and strategizing for the upcoming years. I think I did a good enough job, in the end they wanted me to play bigger and bigger roles. But it was far from being my passion. I decided to do a role backwards and go back into tech again. One of the things I always liked was to roll up my sleeves, finding solutions for complex problems and making difficult things look easy. I like leading people, but from within the team and not because corporate said they should listen to me.

I think this will reflect in what I’ll be writing about. DevOps here, building products there and a lot of private projects inbetween.

Let’s go!