If you are just starting out in tech, you probably won’t understand. If you are longer in the tech field, you can surely relate.

When I began with IT stuff, I had switches, firewalls and servers in my little basement apartment. 8 years later, I just want this shit to work and don’t want to do anything with it. Set it up once, run forever. So I have this business connection with about 150 MBit/s for almost two years now. I bought a cheap router / access point after getting the modem for it and never looked at it. The connection was quite fast and I had nothing to complain about, since I was connected by cable most of the time.

When I moved to the new flat I just connected the thing and did’t think about it either since there were more important things at that time.

A year later, my girlfriend started to work from home and then the whole story began again. I just debugged the line and realized, that I only have 30 MBit/s instead of 179 MBit/s which I have at the modem.

End of the story I replaced the broken router, now the wifi in the living room is pretty fast again at about 160 – 170 MBit/s. But the connection in both offices still sucks at 50 MBit/s.

So I experimented with a powerline kit, a cheap one I still had left. But I coulnd’t get more than 50 MBit/s in my office.

Today I went to the store and bought another kit and tried the whole evening to get more through the line. I ended up with 170 MBit/s on the outlet in the bathroom. Great.

Next try will probably be some wifi mesh stuff.

That’s it. See you tomorrow!

In most teams there are people with different specialities. One is better in frontend, one is better in backend and somebody else knows better how to handle databases. Well, that’s a good thing. You can learn from each other. If you are willing to share and admit what you don’t know.

Actually everything is said in the first paragraph, so I could stop here 😉 But let’s dive in a bit.

The problem I often see is, people are afraid to share their knowledge, because they think they make themselves obsolete. When you are the best Javascript developer and teach everybody else on the team about the new cool ES6 features, you are easily replaceable and could lose your job. Well that’s bullshit.

In the moment you prepare to share something or teach someone, you notice things you didn’t know. At least that happens to me all the time. Especially in tech, you shouldn’t stick with your knowledge. Remember flash? Sure you do. The best flash developers are unemployable today, if they wouldn’t have advanced in other topics.

And on the counterpart, if you admit, that you don’t know everything, you will learn so much new stuff and go through the world which your eyes wide open and encounter cool new things, that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

I’ve looked at a ton of technologies and programming languages, which is good for my job. So I can tell you how to solve a problem with which technology and which tools fit for you.

But as much things I have learned, I have forgotten a ton of them. Because I did on or to tutorials and read the manuals, doesn’t mean I totally master that skill. Repetition is key.

Things like Python, NodeJS, automation stuff, I know by heart, I can tell you hours about Jenkins, about CI, about configuration management, the advantages and disadvantages about several approaches. Why? Because I have done this things daily. I am working with Python for about 6 years every day. But I only know it so well, because I use it every day, I repeat simple things every day.

So what’s my point today? I really suck at CSS, or better at advanced stuff, like animations. My goal for September is, to publish 6 codepens, each on different topics of CSS. Why six? I don’t now 😉 Sounds like a good number to start. I want to do different topics, like layout with flexbox and grid, animations, filters and so on.

Expect the first at the middle of next week. See you tomorrow!

Is that you? It was me. When I started going to the gym and lifting weights I looked for the coolest gym gear I could find and bought a lot of things I didn’t even know how to use. But the thing is, I thought they make me better. It turns out, they don’t.

But I experienced this thing in so many ways. I also looked for cool gadgets, to fill my workspace. USB gadgets all over the place. When I started building stuff with the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi, I also bought a ton of sensors. I didn’t even what to use them for.

After reading a lot about minimalism, not that thing with white tables and white walls all over the place, I started getting rid of a lot of these things. I am still in the process of getting rid of things. But now I now, that all of these actions, where the wrong first thing to do.

Instead of going out there and searching for the coolest stuff for the new thing I want to learn, I try to do my best, with the things I have. And only when I have outgrown these things, I am looking for the stuff that will improve me in this hobby or in this area.

In short, your gear doesn’t matter. You can achieve so much with less. You don’t need a MacBook Pro to start programming, I learned it on a ThinkPad T42 which I bought used for 100 Euro. You don’t need great running shoes to go to the gym. You don’t need a 3000 Euro camera, to learn shooting photos, a used one from eBay is enough for the beginning. Only look for upgrades, if you really need them.

Sometimes, less is more. See you tomorrow!