Contact: projects{at}bowibit{dot}de
Short German CV
Having grown up in Hamburg and been shaped by a Hanseatic upbringing, I have made my curiosity about how things work, especially in the field of computers and their software, my life’s mission.
With a solid scientific background as a researcher and decades of experience in computer science, I specialize in developing robust code that runs reliably around the clock and is written and documented in an understandable way.
My particular expertise lies in modernizing outdated software to adapt it to the requirements and possibilities of today.
I accumulated 40++ years of experience as a professional t-shaped engineer, researcher, nexialist, synergist and as a certified software architect - in roles like company owner, freelancer and employee.
I take my job serious, but I like jokes and a hearty laugh anytime.
I love to recover coding projects approaching failure, migration of old and acient code to modern architectures and languages. Designing and writing architectures and code that are capable of running 24/7 and to be understandable even after long pauses is my favorite part of software craftmanship.
As one example of this I was lately being busy in migrating the central invoice routing software of a large European wholesale business from ancient C++ to modern architectures.
Nowadays I’m back again as a freelancer in the information sciences.
Inside the company I formerly worked for, as a lead coach, I trained beginners and managers in IT related topics, especially about resilience and stress tolerance (“Developer survival guide for corporate environments”).
Being at least familiar or proficient with most if not all functional and procedural languages in the Tiobe-Top-20 index and many of the Top-50-ies and more due to my long history in the business. Beside current professional IDEs and CI/CD-tools.
The elefant in the room: yes, I’m aware of “AI”. Knowing this kind of stuff since the times when fuzzy logic was born and when you knew every neuron by name. Today I’m using LLMs for summaries, writing my own RAG tools for fun and e.g. connecting LLM engines to software as natural language interface.
Nope, coding is no real LLM application. Using statistics to get precise results? Without capabilities to cope with context, left out details or abstractions? You’re kidding me.
As local utilities ollama, LM Studio and others are really nice to have. And of course I use Europe-First LLMs like Mistral.
Aquired these skills in building software solutions on all scales for
- Enterprise (frontends and backends)
- Automotive (from prototype to aftersales)
- Financial services (for deployments in several countries)
- Healthcare (GMA and CDA applications, mobile solutions for diagnosis and ambulances)
- Publishers (distribution control and prognosis, document generation)
- Logistics (European magazine and newpaper distribution systems, return management)
- Plants (real time software, image processing, weighing, transport, identification, HMI)
Language-Preferences? I love and know Clojure, Ada, Common Lisp, Rust, Python, Swift, Kotlin, C++, OCaml … (not necessarily in that order).
Perl and Ruby are long-time sidekicks but now outdated, C++ since it was created by Stroustrup in the 1980s. Today I like more to use Rust …
If I would have the freedom to choose I would take Lisp-dialects as a daily driver.
C# and Java … Written hundreds of thousands of lines with them. But hopefully there are still interesting projects out there?
Started the software craftsmanship career in experimental physics and technical informatics. A passionate commitment in the scientific mindset drives me ever since.
I absolutely prefer working with Open Source tools and applications and support privacy compliant solutions over convenient ones. Nowadays I like the “Europe First” idea especially in IT.
In my freetime I love doing projects like this website (of course hosted in Europe), writing extensions and utilities for my lab computer’s software, stuffing even more smart devices into my home, while torturing a plethora of Raspberry Pi and bigger computers (all driven by Linux) in my home “lab”.
My mobile phones run de’google’d with e/OS/ - or if no alternative app is existing, on a seldom used iOS fallback device (a special hello to Telekom - you tracker cesspit).
To monitor my fitness I use rings and smartwatches to count the steps and heartbeats. After trying gazillions of gadgets (from Fitbit to Samsung to Pine Watch etc. pp.), I ha… ehm love my Pulsar devices, these old mean relentless slave-drivers.
Don’t look for me on Facebook, X (r.i.p. Twitter) , LinkedIn and other social media (sorry Bluesky, I know you’re up for good)…
I have no accounts there anymore after investing a lot of time over decades, I like to spend my precious remaining average life time span in other ways.
Who wants to chat with me should learn about tools like Jitsi, Signal, Threema or look on matrix.org.
Especially no WhatsApp business contacts wanted. Nor MS-Windows-only based software to be written. Thank you.
Sincerely, B: