Debugging the Universe, One Line at a Time
Hey, I’m Ciarán - developer, problem solver, occasional IT therapist.
I’ve spent over a decade in software development, but my career didn’t exactly follow a straight path. I studied Information Systems Development for four years in college, then chased money into finance. At some point, I found myself working in a veterinary clinic (don’t ask, I honestly don’t remember how). Eventually, I landed a job in technical support at a small software company, quickly moved into their development team, and eventually ended up leading it.
I’m a Microsoft stack developer who has worked with everything from VB6 (yes, really) to modern .NET using C#, VB.Net, ASP, Xamarin, Ionic, JavaScript, jQuery, and even a little Angular. I’m also quite strong on the database side of things - SQL Server, MySQL, SQLite, Pervasive, Sybase—you name it. I’ve built desktop & cloud apps, APIs, microservices, and worked with various architectures, even migrating projects between them (not everything needs to be microservice, Colin!).
But my interests go beyond writing code. I love security, CI/CD, DevOps, and infrastructure work (I spent years learning from an IT infrastructure guy, and we swapped a lot of knowledge). I thrive on diving into completely new areas, breaking things apart, and understanding how they work - like that one time I worked for the national agency responsible for the health of all fish in the country. Seriously. (Did you know Oysters can get herpes?)
What You’ll Find on This Blog
This blog is about learning from experience - mine, specifically.
- Technical deep dives into coding, architecture, security, and DevOps.
- Soft skills & leadership advice (handling IT-resistant people, managing “senior” devs with bad attitudes, and surviving office politics).
- (Side note - thanks to ChatGPT for phrasing this point in much nicer language than I initially used!)
- Work-life balance, ADHD-fuelled projects, and abandoned side quests.
- Tech trends, new features, and why some of them are more hype than substance.
I write for all levels of developers, though complete newbies might get a bit lost in my ramblings.
What I Care About
I believe tech should have a positive impact. I’m not here to save the world (though that’d be cool), but I want to build systems people actually enjoy using.
I focus on removing frustrations, designing intuitive experiences, and making tech work for users - not against them. My approach isn’t about collecting data just because we can; it’s about transforming data into genuinely useful insights.
In short, my code helps.
Outside of Code
When I’m not deep in the dev world, I geek out over home automation, space and physics, hacking (ethically, of course), and security. If it involves breaking something just to understand how it works, I’m probably interested.