I've been building things since I was a kid - first with wood, metal and plastic, then with code. I remember building an automated flower watering system for my aunt. Engineering was always just something I did.

It was early 2010. I was 15, and I had just discovered programming. The first language I fell in love with was Pascal. It was a mystery to me that you could write instructions and the machine would execute them - just like a human.

My first compiler was Turbo Pascal 7.0. I think most of you remember this legendary interface:

I spent the rest of my school years writing programs and games, and always knew I wanted to be a programmer. Now I'm a 30-year-old software engineer - not a superstar career, but a lot of real experience in modern software engineering.

Software engineering is, I think, one of the most rapidly evolving industries. The way I wrote code three years ago is completely different from how I do things now.

This blog is my attempt to keep up with that - and share what I learn along the way.

More thoughts

We have LLMs now, and a huge amount of resources covering common practices, principles, and algorithms. I don't see much value in duplicating that here.

What I can offer is something different - my specific experience. The way I actually think through problems. Even if the topic is something well-known, like the 8 queens problem, I'll walk through my thought process rather than just present a solution. That's the part that's hard to Google.

If you come across a post about Tic Tac Toe - trust me, there's something new in how I approach it.

I also plan to write about my career: the obstacles I run into, how I think through them, and how I get past them.

I'm a father of two boys, and I care about building things that can teach kids something real.

Modern tools let us move fast and hit our SLAs - but I think there's real value in engineers sharing their everyday experience: the actual problems they faced, the decisions they made, and how things turned out. That's the kind of writing I want to do here.