About me

Hi, I'm Martin, a self-taught software developer with years of experience at startups and building my own projects. Getting here though wasn't as straightforward and many would say that I've started later.

As a kid and throughout my teenage years, I dreamed of building RTS and RPG games but I might have spent a bit too much time playing them.

I've never been encouraged to actually try to build one, so I did what I knew at the time and that was writing. One day I decided to build a website and create a content that others might find valuable. It actually became quite popular within its niche, so I've got another crazy idea.

My thoughts on that idea went something like this:

I'll just build a marketplace platform on top of the website, so people that already visit my website for informational content would just immediately start interacting with the platform. Yeah, I could get thousands of users within months.

Sounds familiar?

On top of that, I haven't had any money to invest in such idea and, for whatever reason, thought I have to do it myself. No need to consult with anyone. And as simple as that, I just made a deep dive into web development.

How did my learning go?

Fast-forward some sleepless months and I had build a custom BE with Laravel and customized the theme of the website. As if that was the most important, I spend weeks dealing with questions that were completely irrelevant for the time being, such as comparing DBs and worrying about what to do when I reach tens of thousands of users.

At some point, I got somehow derailed into thinking that I need to update the FE with React, and that all startups are using this tech. And so I jumped into learning React and started to rewrite the whole FE.

Granted, for the time being, it seemed as an incredibly good idea and I told myself all the time that even if the project fails, I'd at least learn so much. And I did.

From the side project to the startups

The platform got launched eventually but at that point I realized that I was too absorbed by the software development and all I cared about at that point was learning new stuff. I could imagine doing that every day.

And so I created some profiles on hiring platforms and got picked up. Even though I only got months of experience, it was quite practical and the devs that interviewed me loved that.

My startup journey in a nutshell

I couldn't have been luckier. I've moved to Berlin and joined a startup full of people who were all experts in their fields. I've had a great time working closely with my fellow team mate Thomas, an amazing UX expert and designer.

And I could say without any exaggeration that without Rouven (CTO), who filled so many knowledge gaps I had as far as software development goes, I would never be where I am now.

It's both great and unfortunate at the same time that this field moves so fast. It's what it is, and I guess it's a trend not unique to software development. Over the years I transitioned more into BE-specific role, worked for projects in US and with people from every continent on the planet, except of course Antarctica.

Why this website?

I love software development, and I want to share what I've learned over the years. I hope you find the content useful and learn something you didn't know or didn't understood before.

I'm thankful for all people that helped me to get where I am and I hope I can do the same for as many people as I can. 🙌