Good to see you here. Well, I suppose it is a place where you say a thing or two about yourself. One always hopes not to speak too pretentiously in their bios...

Life-long struggle for learning seems really appealing to me. Programming - and all the engineering that comes with it - is one of the ways that I'm fulfilling this desire. It is a great joy having to decouple concepts into code / pseudocode and implementing them later on. When trying to learn anything, one of the greatest "gifts" one could have, is just finding pure enjoyment in the activity being mastered. While I'm no master, the path to becoming one is quite a challenge. And challenges I like.

People having no formal education, but skilled in some field are usually reffered to as self-taught men. When getting really deep into that term, it would hardly ever be true. After all, having no formal education does not leave you to yourself. Rather than that, you are left in The Huge Realm Of The Information - also seldom described as the Internet - which contains all the goods useful to acquire knowledge, as well as straight-up nonsense that you need to carefully filter out. This - in itself - is an incredibly hard skill to gain.

Okay, but enough of this chit-chat. You may want (but most likely you don't care) to know more about my achievements in the glorious world of programming. The answer would be that I've done hardly anything. I mean, just look at how much code people have written in the very day you're reading this. Just realize how much information has been created and published. Comparing anyone's input to that number would be like realizing how much microorganisms live on (and in) your body.

But people still ask others to collaborate with them, companies still recruit specialists (well, I hope!) and learners continue their struggles. After all, it's not the quantity that is the best characteristic here. It is the quality which is a result of good information-seeking skills, discipline, communication, commitment and many others. I'm aware of that, and I'm trying my best by continuosly learning everyday.

• Alkolicznik (live demo). My biggest effort so far. An artist may call it a magnum opus. Not me, though. This emerged as a result of not having built anything from top to bottom by myself. I've already had a list of nice, small projects implementations of someone else's ideas (see here or here). However, I felt like it was the time to improve.

  This made me realize how tough, how time-consuming making decent applications is. The process was awesome. You can read more about this project in its README file.

• (Work in progress) Micro-blog. While still in-development, I could give a succint description of a thought process behind it.

  I've been wondering about having a place on the Internet where I could explain - to others as well as to myself - various problems from the programming world. A blog, if you will. That place could also be used as somewhat of a diary: to document my learning journey. Obviously, I could not just use some random template available on the web, I had to create it myself!

  From a technical point of view, this application is my first-more-serious take on microservices, mocks or OAuth 2.0.

• Account Service. Not a "big" project by any means, however a solid foundation for my Spring Boot skills. Part of JetBrains academy course.

  This has been done a while ago. Because the course providers do not provide code (only tests and guidelines), the process involved a lot of research on my own, which I consider a plus. You will find there a little bit of everything: from security features through logging services to testing using mocks.

Just as previously I've realized I should make something bigger by myself, now I realize my shortcomings in working with other people.

Certainly now - besides having some side-projects that I intend to continue developing - I'd love to commit myself more to work with other people. Be it an open-source repository, active participation in communities, showing up at events or working in a team on a project. Anything really! I'm open to suggestions and that's why you should take a look at the next section!

You can write to me through:

• E-mail: k2ttel@gmail.com
• Discord: _icemajor
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcin-startek-b994b4298/