Hello world

Hi there, it's me.

My name is Malte, I run a small software company.
I would like to tell you how I try to manage to make a living as an independant software developer. If you ask yourself what an independant software developer does, this blog is for you.

We do stuff. We try to help people feeling at home with their machines. Means we develop software. Those icons you click when you want to write a letter or play a game, you know? ;-)
That does not make it magicians or HARDWARE engineers, though. If you want to ask us how to fix your Windows installation or get us into a debate which operating system is "better" or might want to drag us into an Open sauce war, I am afraid we must leave you with a *shrug*, because we simply do not know how to fix it or just are not interested in going that route.

We create computer programs.

In this blog I will try to explain a bit how that works. I hope you do not run away screaming.
I will not try to train you creating Software.
Unless you ask me to. I am not going to talk about writing code, so if you are someone looking for information, how to use the devlopment system we use most of the time, there are other places. Of course you are welcome to read on and I surely would be happy if you would, but this is not a classroom in a (mac)book.

I want to try to explain what computer programs are, why you need them, which one you may need, or just find entertaining. I would like to explain how things work behind the scene. I will let you look over my shoulder, to give you a bit of the bigger picture. I do not mean to annoy anyone. I will not be breaking any NDAs. I will not show how you get code to work, but what it takes to create something that works.

A computer program tells your machine what to do. Well, maybe "tell" is not the right word, it is a bit more like asking

"computer, would you pretty please do me the favour to display a field, your user can type into? I know you might have other stuff to do, but if it is not too much hassle, would you please?"

Other programmers might be a little more harsh than us, trying to play master and servant with your computer. They command them in languages more close to the computer mother tongue. I am in doubt most people would enjoy learning those commands. Trying to write computer Software is not for everyone. It may be for you and I encourage you to try, if you feel any interest in making software. However, one shall not forget that computers are nasty little creatures. Sometimes they are just bitching on us. They will refuse to cooperate for a long time, giving us strange messages or even crashes. Sometimes they are nasty enough to pretend to be working, just to play a mean trick on you while you are not looking.

Our job as software developers is to convince machines to behave. That is what we do for a living. And it is not always an easy job. Sure, we coders aren't paid badly. We make a decent income. This allows us to raise families if we want to.

Enough for a Hello world post I guess, otherwise I might be accused of verbosity, like so often.