I got interested in coding in 2016 when a friend showed me a small Batch script with a Matrix-style effect. It was just a few lines printing random numbers in green, but for some reason that was enough to get me into programming.
Since then, I have tried a lot of different things. I built my own PC, spent a lot of time with Linux, used a Raspberry Pi for open-source projects like music servers and NAS setups, and rented VPS servers to run Tor relays, which got me more into server administration and self-hosting.
Most of what I learned came from online resources, especially YouTube, and from just trying things out myself. Over time I ended up focusing mostly on Python and web development, while also using C and Rust when a compiled language makes more sense.
A big part of what I do now is crawling and scraping websites with Python. That is probably the thing I spend the most time on in my personal projects. I like building tools that parse websites, collect metadata, and automate stuff in a practical and reliable way. I usually start with static crawling, and if that is not enough, I use browser automation with Playwright.
I am generally interested in technical topics and like learning new things whenever I can. I also sometimes look into reverse engineering with Ghidra, mostly because I find it interesting and like understanding how things work.
I have experience with Gentoo and currently use Arch Linux. I now work full-time in IT, and before that I also did a few internships that gave me some early practical experience in professional IT work. I also studied Practical Computer Science in Germany with a focus on Java application development and systems technology.
Outside of tech, I enjoy music and story-driven games like NieR: Automata, Life is Strange, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, and Detroit: Become Human. I want to continue this whole tech journey because it is pretty much the only useful thing I can do to earn money, so I might as well commit to it properly. As a bonus, I actually enjoy it a lot too.