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I'm jl117 — a software engineer based in Zurich.

This is my blog. I write about things I'm working on, things I've learned, tools I use, and stuff I find interesting. There's no content strategy here. I just write when I have something to say.

What I write about

Whatever I'm into at the moment. Usually that means:

  • Software engineering — how I build things, what breaks, what I learned from it breaking.
  • AI & local tooling — running models on hardware that shouldn't be able to, automating stuff that's tedious.
  • Keyboards — split keyboards, custom firmware, keymaps I've iterated on too many times.
  • Coming from a different trade — I didn't start in tech. I have opinions about that.
  • Open source — projects I maintain, decisions I made, things I'd do differently.

I try to be precise without being boring. If it's worth writing, it's worth explaining properly.

What I do

Full-stack development. Dart/Flutter, Go, Python, whatever fits. I care about clean architecture, types, and code that someone else can actually read later.

Before software I worked a skilled trade with my hands for years. That did more for how I think about engineering than any course could have. Measure twice. Plan for things going wrong. Trust that systems fail where you're not looking.

Projects

I keep my code on Codeberg — not GitHub. Privacy-friendly, community-driven, no tracking.

🔗 codeberg.org/Jl115

Things I'm working on:

  • Polyglot Odyssey — 100 days, one hour a day, six languages (Rust, TypeScript, C, C++, Zig, Dart). A curriculum for becoming a polyglot engineer with a focus on security and low-level systems. The commit graph doesn't lie.
  • Bond — A mobile app for two people. You draw, the other person sees it as screen-glow and vibration. Messages stay on device. The server just plays matchmaker and never sees what you drew.
  • Obscura — Ongoing. Not talking about it yet.

This site

Ghost, self-hosted, small VPS. No tracking, no ads, no pop-ups. The privacy page has the details if you care about that kind of thing.

If something here helped you, good. That's the whole point.

August 2026.