My First Post

Hey there, I’m Marko. Over nearly two decades, my mission has been to simplify complexity, from the initial requirements to the code level.

I’ve consistently shared my knowledge and experience by mentoring many remarkable teammates. Though I honed my skills on various platforms through many projects across multiple companies, for more than the last decade, I’ve been deeply rooted in the world of iOS Development.

While I am not a seasoned blog writer, my passion for programming, software development as well as software architecture, has fueled both my professional work and personal hobby projects, ever since I wrote my first lines of code.

Writing, on the other hand (of words, not code) has just been a part of my professional life, but in the form of code reviews on private repositories or within the virtual walls of company wikis and chats.

I’m starting this blog without a concrete plan because, sometimes, the best adventures are the unplanned ones. Join me on this discovery as I figure out the exciting topics that will fill these pages.

So, why start a blog now after all these years? Well, it’s a bit of a story. About a year ago, life took an unexpected turn when I found myself part of a mass layoff in 2023, right around the time my wife and I discovered we were going to become parents. After I had a few interviews, we made the unconventional decision to embrace a “sabbatical year” – a chance for me to spend quality time with my family. Looking back, it turned out to be the best decision ever!

I kicked off this sabbatical leave with a sort of “digital detox”, where I didn’t touch a computer for about six months - marking the longest break from a computer ever since I had one.

Now, let me tell you, having a baby is an incredible and profound experience, but here’s what they don’t usually tell you: it’s quite a challenging project too. The decision to be there full-time for my wife and spend every precious moment with our newborn son has been priceless.

Nevertheless, the intriguing combination of a digital detox and the soundtrack of a crying baby sparked my desire to dive back into the world of code. Initially, I found joy in tinkering with some side projects (new post idea alert!), but soon I realized: it’s probably time to re-enter the professional arena as well.

If I had written a blog earlier, I’d probably have many posts by now, but I guess I was too busy with reading and writing code all the time.

However, I was always making things - on the job or out of hobby: from designing databases or APIs to coding web frontends and backends, configuring infrastructure, automating tedious tasks, developing enterprise systems, envisioning, leading and implementing desktop and mobile apps, command line tools, libraries, scripts, etc., you name it!

Note for readers from the future: that was all before ChatGPT and AI

I’ve also entertained the idea of occasionally taking a trip down memory lane (no promises, though, since I’d have to dig through some quite old git repos or even hard disks) - attempting to find and relive some of those special moments in code, which could have been good material for this “blog” thing.

Lately, I’ve been crafting this “Portfolio / Blog” website – a virtual space to reintroduce myself, share snippets of my journey, and perhaps help or inspire others along the way.

To start, I wrote 3 new posts (in my Apps section):

• Yacht Timer
• Touch League
• TweetPlay

As the journey continues, I’m contemplating the next post where I’ll share the story of making this very website. Excited to have you join me in that exploration. See you there!