About me and this site

Hello, my name is Markus Dieterle.

I've been using computers for more than 30 years now and written and changed programs on nearly every computer system I worked with.

Like other technically interested people of my generation I started with some of the early home and personal computers back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Computer programming turned into a hobby first and later became a passion for me. I especially liked to write and experiment with graphics programs - it's just great to really see how code changes effect the outcome in a graphic.

I worked my way up to powerful workstations and mainframes when I was initially studying computer science, changing to sensory systems engineering later on. In order to program on each of those systems, I had to learn several different programming languages along the way, like Basic, Pascal, C and a few others.

While I am currently working as an SAP Basis specialist and administrator, I still write some tool and application programs when I need them.

Working on my own software and as part of a development team at different times, I learned a lot about the "dos" and "don'ts" of software development. This includes insights on the side of development organization, but also knowledge about code analysis, finding errors and several other aspects of programming and software development.

My motivation for this site

The main reason I started this site was because I realized that there is no easy and smooth way to get into computer programming today. In addition to this, traditional programming tutorials usually don't cover a very broad range of different programming applications and program types, so you usually don't see how flexible programming can be.

It was much easier to learn about the different aspects of hardware, software and operating systems with the simple early home and personal computers like the old Apple II or the famous Commodore 64.

Modern computers (and computer-controlled systems) are much more complicated on just about every level. With so much details to learn about and a constantly evolving and expanding topic, the learning curve becomes very steep and frustrating for most people. Well, at least all the additional computing powers has allowed operating systems to become more intelligent and user-friendly...

With my experience in programming computers which were (and are) getting only slightly more complicated with each new generation, I can look back and focus on the things which are really necessary. From this basic knowledge I hope you will have a good starting point for gathering further knowledge and experience.

I also hope to give you a much broader understanding of what programming can be and where and how you can use it by covering different aspects and projects in the future.

It doesn't matter if you are looking into computer programming and software development just out of curiosity or as a possible hobby to pick up or if you are considering this as a job option for your future life.

The skills you can train with computer programming also come in handy at other areas in life.

So, welcome to my site. I hope you'll enjoy reading it.