Software Engineering Lessons, Patterns, and Practical Guidance from the Trenches of a Legacy Manufacturer¶

by Daniel Hirsch

Welcome¶

Welcome to my personal blog, where I share insights, lessons, and practical guidance from my journey as a software engineer in the manufacturing domain here in Germany. This blog is a collection of my experiences, challenges, and solutions that I have encountered while working with legacy systems and modern software engineering practices.

I started as a PLC programmer on the shopfloor working on mechatronic systems of one of the biggest automotive manufactuerers here in Germany. Over the years, I find my journey to the software engineering domain working on I4.0 transformation strategy and solutions.

As a young software engineer, I challenged many beliefs and practices of people working in this legacy environment for years and often (intentionally) ruffled some feathers in the process. I am knowning of speaking up what I think, and I am grateful to work in an environment where this is appreciated and encouraged - so take this with a grain of salt.

In my blog you will read about technologies like Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform and CI/CD pipelines, programming languages like Go and Python and how Haskell and Functional Programming influence my thinking and approach to software engineering and architecture. How we find ways to use AI to solve problems in the manufacturing domain and not only to write chatbots or use AI only for code generation - instead using it as an additional tool in our engineering toolbelt to enhance our solutions.

Welcome to my blog, and I hope you find it insightful and helpful in your own software engineering journey! Happy reading!