I wrote my first BASIC program in 1981 and have been paid to program since 1996. I have experience writing full stack software for the web and have written production code in Java, Python, JavaScript, Kotlin, Clojure, Ruby and Smalltalk. And of course, I know HTML, CSS and SQL as well.
I have built and designed applications on various versions of Open Source software stacks based on Linux and databases like PostgreSQL. Since the end of the '00s I have used cloud providers such as AWS, Google Cloud and Digital Ocean to deliver these solutions.
I was an early adopter of what was later to be called agile methodologies and was a founder of Agila Sverige, Swedens first conference on this topic. As agile grew mainstream and the meaning of the term went diluted I choose to step away from agile as an industry, but I still work by the ideals of the early movement. This means test driven development, continuous delivery and deployment and an adherence to a well functioning workplace. If asked kindly I still give talks about methodology.
I have spoken at numerous conferences and have worked as a teacher in all of my areas of expertise. Teaching and speaking is a complementary activity for me as I like to speak from experience.
Well, it lasted 18 months, but I’ve changed Linux distro again. I really thought I had settled on Fedora KDE - I really liked it.
The whole point to running Fedora was that I didn’t have to fix much with the OS, it just worked - until it didn’t. I have two main computers, a Framework laptop, and a stationary desktop computer, and they both got the same problem at the same time - the screen turned black after login if using Wayland, and I couldn’t find a way to fix it. Xorg worked decently, but both computers required re-installation. But the the whole point of running Fedora was that I shouldn’t have to deal with things like this. It should be noted that I was still on Fedora 40, and 41 had been out for three months.
When I write tests in Java, I find it tedious to manually create objects and setting attributes. Code easily turns out like this:
var foo = new Foo("Satellite", 1000, true);
var bar = new Bar("Edward", "Scissorhands", List.of(foo));
// do stuff
assertEquals(foo, bar.findByName("Satellite"));
Here we're first creating a Foo, which is then added to a Bar. We then test that we can find the Foo when we ask the Bar to search for it.
A year and half ago I ended a two year experiment using Windows as my daily driver OS. In short, I felt WSL had too many wrinkles that annoyed me. I switched back to Linux and it was like coming home after being away for too long.
Since then I've tried a number of distros and desktop environments, and I believe I have finally settled on Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop Edition. Getting there took some time though, I tried a number of alternatives, and this is my condensed experience: