TL;DR: I'm Eric - a web developer who solves problems you didn't know existed, teaches others to ask better questions, and believes the best meetings are the ones that never happen. I code with AI🤖, lift weights with my wife 💪, and tell people I "build websites" while secretly being a CTO 🤫
The longer version
There's a peculiar dance between what we do and what we tell people we do. When people ask what I do for a living, I say "I build websites." It's not a lie, but it's like calling the ocean "wet" - technically accurate, wildly incomplete.
I'm Eric, based in Germany, and I've been in a committed relationship with code for over 15 years💻. Bachelor's, Master's, seven consecutive years in the industry - the whole nine yards of academic and professional devotion. These days, I work as a freelance web developer and coach at coding bootcamps, which is a fancy way of saying I solve problems in the morning and teach others to find better problems in the afternoon.
You see, coding isn't about having answers. It's about cultivating questions🤔. The depth of questions you can ask directly reflects how well you can navigate complexity in your domain. Every junior developer I mentor starts by wanting the answers, but I teach them to fall in love with the questions. Good questions lead you to discover that someone, somewhere, has already tackled your problem. Thinking you're the first to face an issue isn't pioneering spirit; it's exercising your ignorance in public.
I despise meetings the way vampires despise garlic🧛♂️🧄. Not because I'm antisocial - I love people - but because most meetings are where time goes to die. Give me Slack any day. Text, emojis, async video messages - communication that respects the currency of life: time⏰. I take exactly zero notes. My brain is my notebook, and if something's important enough, it'll stick. If it doesn't, it probably wasn't worth the ink anyway.
Here's where it gets interesting: I'm in love with AI❤️. Cursor, Claude Code - these aren't my replacements; they're my dance partners. People ask if I'm worried about AI taking my job. After 15+ years of investment in this craft, shouldn't I be terrified? But fear and fascination are two sides of the same coin, and I choose to flip it towards wonder✨. I've never had more fun coding than now, building in the open, showing what's possible when you embrace the tools rather than wrestle them.
My technical heart beats for performance🚀. Next.js and Vercel are where I build, TailwindCSS how I style - and I'd rather eat glass than write CSS any other way. But pretty code isn't the endgame. I squeeze every millisecond out of web apps like they owe me money. Cost-effective, fast, efficient - the holy trinity of web development.
But life isn't all code and keyboards. The same person who obsesses over LeetCode problems and Advent of Code puzzles is also a Les Mills BodyPump instructor🏋️♂️. My wife and I teach classes together - while I trade my keyboard for barbells, she brings her own energy to the studio. We're regulars at the sauna too, where our friend works as an attendant. There's something grounding about the ritual of heat and relaxation that balances out the abstract world of software development.
I drive a Tesla decorated with vandalism scratches - unintentional monuments to public opinion about its CEO🚗. Should've gotten that "I love the car, not the CEO" sticker. Two cats rule our home with the kind of benevolent dictatorship only felines can manage🐱👑.
Most people who know me personally have no clue about the depth of what I do. I'm a CTO who's never mentioned it in casual conversation. A mentor who keeps it on the down-low. It's not modesty; it's practicality. When you say "I build websites," people nod and move on. When you say "I architect scalable solutions for distributed systems," their eyes glaze over like donuts🍩.
So here I am, writing "Spirits Don't Fly" - because sometimes the most grounded perspectives come from those who've learned that ascension isn't always about going up. Sometimes it's about digging deeper into the questions, finding what actually works, and sharing it with others.
Welcome to my corner of the internet👋. Here's where I document what I build, what I learn, and what I teach. No fluff, no meetings required.