About this site

This site is my "Glossy Brochure" for my freelance business.

Here I write about my experiences and thoughts about freelancing and my mindset as a high value professional.

I have a separate blog on The Last Viking LTD where I discuss code and technical stuff.

Privacy

This site does not track you. There are no cookies, no javascript tracking, no loading of icons or images from third party sites like Facebook, Linkedin or Google. The sites does not use Google Analytics or any other similar services. It's just you and the content you read. Noone is watching. I respect your privacy and your integrity 100%.

Credits

All pictures are either taken by me or friends of mine, or they are released with permissive licenses for republishing and changes (Wikipedia Commons) or generated by AI from my prompts.

About me

I am a Norwegian expat, currently living in a small village in Bulgaria with my 8 dogs, my motorcycle and my computers.

Over the years I have worked with many programming languages. My preferred programming language since 1996 is C++. The code I write for my own projects usually runs on Linux, Windows and macOS.

Unlike many software developers, I have never had any desire to "move on" in my career and become a manager. I guess I love solving problems and writing code too much. I have worked in tiny startups, medium size startups, and for two years as a senior C++ developer in a giant software company. I have declined senior staff positions in two of the largest software / IT companies in the world. I treasure my personal and professional freedom more.

I am not a "Full Stack" or "Front End" or "Back End" developer. I have a wide surface of experience that makes it hard to put a simple label on it. I know how to make web sites, of course. I also know how to make native GUI applications for Linux, Windows, macOS, Android and IOS. I am best known for some of the servers and libraries I have written (most for the War FTP Daemon I guess). I have spent months optimizing a new thread-pool written in portable C++ for a sever application used by almost all medium to large companies in the world. I have written - and optimized - C++ database libraries, using sqlite, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, and Postgres. Even Oracle (although I prefer not to talk about that). I have written hundreds of command-line programs.

Many companies are still embracing micro-services and REST. I am familiar with both. That is; splitting complex functionality into micro-services (which is hard to get right), and making components talk to each others. The talking part with REST I have used for quite some time - both on the client end and at the server side. I have also played with Googles more efficient alternative, grpc. Before that I used Zeroc's ICE and Corba. Back in the 1990s I used Sun's legacy RPC protocol over UDP for client/server communication.

I have dived deep into kubernetes. Beside designing, optimizing, enhancing and maintaining cloud and edge micro-services and Large Data distributed applications, I have also worked extensively on deployments and deployment tooling.

AI

The hype of today is AI. Many of my previous "microservices expert" or "distributed systems expert" colleagues are now "AI experts", according to their LinkedIn profiles ;)

I don't consider myself an AI expert, although I have had a deep interest in AI for decades. The idea (and fear) of AI systems was what triggered my initial interest in computers in the 1980s. I learned Prolog, the AI programming language of that era, to see how I could use it to solve complex problems. I soon realized that Prolog and "AI" were hyped up and could not deliver anything useful for me in the foreseeable future. Then, decades later, in the 2010s, I found a local AI user group in Sofia. At the time, people in the group were experimenting with TensorFlow, a free, open-source software library primarily used for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. At the same time, my best friend started working as a manager in an AI startup in Sofia. I visited him as often as I could (I was busy working as a C++ developer), and spent time discussing AI and related technology with the startup's data scientists and engineers. Fascinating stuff, but still immature.

When ChatGPT was released, I was immediately on board as a user. Since then, I have used AI in my daily work for software development, and in my private life to research ideas and explore exotic subjects that were out of reach with traditional search engines. Today, I experiment with local models on my workstation, and in my CI pipelines. I try to find the sweet spot where the AI models are most useful.

Besides being a senior software architect / developer, I have been:

Programming languages I am actively using:

AI's I use frequently

Programming languages I have used professionally over the past 10 years:

Operating systems I have written software for

C++ technologies and libraries I use a lot today

Other programs / technologies I use often these days

Some things I have designed and implemented

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

Older

Internet protocols I have implemented from scratch

General Internet servers I have implemented singlehandedly from scratch

Internet / telecom protocols have I worked with at a low level

A handful of other technologies I have used over the years

Some of the things I have ported between operating systems

What people say about me

I've never seen so much passion for programming in one person until I met you :) Калин Благоев, Senior Software Developer