About Me
Who are you?
My name is Alexander Groß. I live in Leipzig, Germany, with a cat and three co-residents.
I am the CTO and co-founder of GROSSWEBER, a Software Consulting firm
located in Germany. GROSSWEBER offers
customized software development training and consulting services for a wide range of industries and competency
areas. I work mainly with our customers on challenging projects, offering advice on software architecture and
helping to advance development practices of agile teams.
How did you end up where you are now?
I was born in 1980. I've been into computers since the age of 8 when my grandfather introduced me to the world of
8-bit microcomputers manufactured by
Robotron. Fairly short after that I started coding my first programs using the now-ancient BASIC interpreter that
came with the
KC 85/3. I remember one of my first programs being as simple as drawing a race car I plotted on paper
before. This has been one of the key moments in my life: I earned great satisfaction from using a machine as a
tool to make my world a little brighter.
By the age of 12 I got hold my first IBM PC, with blazing 12 MHz clock speed. The computer was put together by
my uncle
who left me and the machine with some notes about MS-DOS and Norton Commander installed. I was intrigued by the
new system
and started exploring the inner workings starting from batch files to writing
TSRs when I learned Turbo Pascal on my own a couple of years later. With some friends of mine I ventured
into the
world of assembler but soon introduced myself to Borland Delphi and Windows programming in C and C++.
I am now quite comfortable in the Microsoft world and started transitioning my development efforts to .NET in 2003
when Microsoft conducted the first .NET Summercamp at the University of Leipzig. Today I am one of the leaders of
the local
.NET User Group Leipzig and organize these camps and other events
like the
Developer Open Space myself. This gives me the great opportunity of
introducing other developers to current technologies as well as getting in touch with people. I consider myself an
experienced polyglot software developer with a particular interest in application architecture, graphic design,
tools
and agile processes.
During my spare time I like to check in the other line of code some open-source
projects.
Besides that, I like to prepare the occasional meal for my friends and enjoy Geocaching.
Why do you blog?
I started blogging in 2005 because I wanted see what it's like to publish content on the web and be connected to
other software
developers. Mostly for selfish reasons The Right Stuff is the repository for
my recipes and a knowledge base for some of the challenges I encounter during my work. Hopefully other
people will find
my posts useful, relevant to their work or just interesting. I strongly believe that blogs are a two-way medium,
so please
feel free to comment or write an e-mail.
What's your education/your professional experience?
I've been studying Computer Science at the Berufsakademie Glauchau and
the
University of Leipzig. During the the last years I've implemented several business applications, including
work
on a research project conducted at the Univerity of Leipzig's
Department for
Business Information
Systems. For a more
information please visit
my XING profile.
Can you send me your dasBlog theme?
I currently don't publish the theme that is used to display this blog. However, this may change in the
future.
Where can I find the imprint?
The imprint of this blog can be found here. Please note that it's available in
German only.
Please leave a comment on my posts or
write an e-mail.
If you're using one of the many social networking sites you can find me over at
XING and LinkedIn.