3 Highlights From 2023

January 4, 2024

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This post was originally part of my newsletter. I am making it available here as an archive so that it is also accessible to readers of my blog.

Hi,

When was the last major change in your life?

For me, it was becoming self-employed in 2023. What an adventure!

The year is now over, and I enjoyed the holidays to unwind and spend time with my family.

Believe me, in the first year of self-employment, it’s leisure time that suffers the most 😉

So much happened last year. There were so many highlights. And there were so many interesting topics. Today, I want to share three of my many highlights from last year with you. Buckle up. Here we go!

1. The Quiz Show Disaster as a Keynote Anecdote

In November, I had the honor of opening the RabbitMQ Summit with my keynote “The Performance Mindset.” It was not only a lot of fun and a great honor, but I also learned something interesting:

If you want the audience’s attention, start with a bang!

I couldn’t help but use the disaster of the launch of the quiz show “Quizduell” on German television as an example. It’s entertaining and instructive.

The effects of not being sufficiently prepared for a launch can be read from the face of Jörg Pilawa (the host). In the end, it’s not the developer who suffers when performance goes down the drain. It’s always the customer.

If you missed it, here is the link to my keynote. Especially watch the first 5 minutes. It’s delightful 😁

2. “What Accidental Complexity in Development Costs” was printed in the Golem Plus special issue

Since last year, I have been writing for Golem as a freelance author. The Golem team approached me at the beginning of 2023. My blog “Microservices are a Big Ball of Mud” was on the front page of Hacker News. And that caught attention.

In the following months, I wrote an article or two. And the article “What Accidental Complexity in Development Costs” was included as one of the most-read in the special issue at the end of the year. A great honor!

We are a small but fine group here. Writing the newsletter is always a pleasure for me. I don’t need to be formal. It can be emotional. It should (must!) be opinionated.

And that’s well-received. My open rate is never below 60% - usually much higher. And few of you unsubscribe. That’s fun!

This year I want to invest even more. I want to make the newsletter bigger. There are also plans for other formats. But that’s a topic for another time 😉

I went through the archive again to pick out my favorite newsletters. That’s not easy. But here are a few that I enjoyed reading a second time:

PS: Recommending the newsletter gives good karma 😇

2024 is going to be an exciting year! I am already planning several interesting changes. New formats and great content. So far, everything is still in an early phase. But you will definitely hear about it as soon as it’s ready 😉

I wish you a good start to 2024 and much success!

Rule the Backend,

~ Marcus