Who is Konstantin Haase?
Well, that’s me. And, according to Google, some doctor. I don’t know much about him, but I am an IT student from Potsdam, Germany, working part time as a Rails developer for Finnlabs and spending a lot of my free time on open source projects.
Where and when did you start programming?
Nearly 14 years ago my family and me got our first computer. Shortly after that I started to learn programming. QBasic. I think the initial reason for doing so was that our computer sucked big time compared to what my class mates had, so all their fancy games wouldn’t run on my machine. Plus we didn’t have internet access, so there really wasn’t much else to do with it. QBasic was preinstalled and included documentation, some introduction from a friend of my parents and I was hooked.
You favorite Languages/Frameworks? And why?
The language I feel most comfortable with is Ruby. It is not the cleanest nor the most expressive language, but it is extremely flexible compared to most mainstream language. Moreover, the POLS that can not only be found in Ruby itself, but most popular projects the vibrant ruby community produces also follow it. I really enjoy Rubinius. If you fancy code reading, you should check out its source.
If you ever accidentally visited my Github profile page, you might have already noticed: I love Sinatra, it’s super simple and still extremely powerful. Less than 2000 SLOC, that usually do exactly what you want and bend to your will.
Not that you think I’m a total Ruby head: I also spend a fair amount of time in Smalltalk, mainly for academic topics, and I like it. There are some other languages I also find rather attractive. Like, CoffeeScript. I’m not much of a JavaScript hacker anyways, but whenever possible, I try to use CoffeeScript instead. Prolog is also amazing, I just have no real use for it.
What does your typical day look like?
I get up at eight. Go, to the bathroom, eat breakfast, you know, the full deal. Usually I run to get the bus. If it’s Tuesday or Friday, or Wednesday and I haven’t got anything else to do, I take the S-Bahn to Berlin for work. This takes about 40 mins, which I usually spend hacking on some open source project. On the other week days, I go to university, usually hanging out in the same room where I managed to snatch some office space. There I’m in mixed mode: I work on university projects, but I also do some open source stuff, if I’m not too busys. If I’m lucky my university projects and open source hacking overlap, well, maybe that’s just wishful thinking. When I get home, I usually spend some more time on open source projects. Unless I’m to exhausted from work/university.
What do you do in your free time?
Open source hacking. Some photography. More open source hacking. Spending time with my significant other. I really spend a lot of time on open source.
Current favorite apps?
I’m not much of an app guy, in the sense of iPhone/Mac apps. So, well, RVM, Redcar and Homebrew.
What OS do you prefer?
Everything Unix. For my laptop I switched from Linux to Mac OSX about two years ago, but I wouldn’t mind going back.
Small picture for your Workplace?
One of my workplaces (at home):
Name something that has inspired you recently?
I attended two talks by one of the PyPy guys recently, one about partial evaluation, one about automatically generating a Python VM from the PyPy interpreter and partially compiling Python to native code. That was really inspiring.
What do you prefer (and why)? Freelance work or full time employment?
To be honest: I’m not sure, really. I never did any serious freelance work, in fact, I have not been paid for hacking until October ’09, so I’m probably not the best person to get advice from. It’s more important to have fun and earn money on a somewhat regular basis. I would definitely prefer freelancing over working full time in a cubical or something like that. Also, I like pair programming, so freelancing on my own might be a bit boring from time to time.
What are your personal projects and goals for 2011?
Going to more conferences. I was at RubyConf 2010 in New Orleans. That was just amazing. If you want to meet me: I’ll be at the Scottish Ruby Conference, and I’m planning to attend at least Nordic Ruby and Euruko.
