Today 2012 ends. Time to review the past year. This is just a short list of things I found most important in my life:

• on September 6th I've married Katharina Bauer. She is by far the most important person in my life. I can talk to her about anything and everything. She's always helping me out in some kind, and I'm really lucky to have her as my wife. Thanks for the great time, Katharina - and thanks for your support. To many many more lucky years. I love you :-*

• on September 3rd I've been working at weluse GmbH for a whole year now. I've enjoyed working here. For one because of my great colleagues, and of cause my great boss. Thanks a lot, Oliver! You've been really supportive this past year, whenever I needed a little more time to get my private life together.

• in August the 23rd Wacken Open Air festival happened - and for the very first time I've gotten a tripple A wristlet. I've been working for ICS Festival Service GmbH multiple years now and 2012 was by far the best. Thanks for the great opportunity, great people and great work we've been doing. You guys rock. Seriously.

Many more things happened, and I'm really greatful for all the support I've had. Thanks goes out to all my friends and my family, all people who are close to me and kept on walking with me. I love you guys. Thanks!

So, it's been more than a year since I started this blog. And it's been a really nice year for me! But lets start at the beginning:

Merry Christmas everyone! I really hope you can enjoy this years X-mas.

Now, what happened last year? Here's a short recap, in no particular order:

• Since September 1st I'm employed at Weluse GmbH. The last three months have been really nice and I really enjoy working there. Interesting projects, nice co-workers and a good atmosphere. I'm looking forward to 2012.

• On Mai 15th I moved in with my girlfriend Katharina. We're both growing on our relationship - so it's a really good one and an intense at that as well.

• Katharina and I are officially engaged on December 23rd. That's 23.12.11 people! How cool is that? And easy to remember as well! ;)

• ICS Festival Service GmbH hired me earlier this year to continue my work on the Festivalmanager Software I developed during my time at Empuxa GmbH. We've pretty much extended every part of the system and are looking into another round of changes for 2012. Great news, and plenty of fun as well.

• Since I started working at Weluse GmbH I got a chance to work on an iPhone/ Android App using Appcelerators Titanium Studio. While the iPhone version worked out okay the Android version didn't. So this year's advice: go native-native and avoid Titanium Studio 4 mobile.

It's been an interesting year after all. Next up: 2012. Guess it can just get better!

Just now I've finished refactoring one of my clients projects. Refactoring your own code can be tedious from time to time but it's important. But why is that? Most of the time refactoring your own code does not help you become a better programmer. It does not help you earn money since most of the time you won't be able to charge for any of it.

I argue it helps raising your reputation - in two ways.

1. Your clients will be more pleased. Whenever I start refactoring my code I have to go through it over and over again. And I'm not just talking about syntacic sugar here, I'm talking about adding new libraries, re-writing parts of your code in its entirety. It's like I'm re-creating everything, but with more informations than I had before. This enables me to reduce code complexity, helps me remove bugs I didn't even know I had when I first wrote this code or add the finishing touch to features I considered done. It help's me increase the overall stability of my code. Increased stability also means less crashes, and more solid features mean less annoyed clients.

2. Your successors won't think bad about you. When you create something new from scratch chances are you won't be working on it forever. Meaning others will have to clean up the mess you left behind. Leaving behind less of mess also means that your successor will be able to work with your code more easily, and hands down reduce the chances of them bad mouthing your work. Maybe he might even start looking for more of your work on github - who knows?

Although I have not always thought like this you have to start somewhere - somewhen. Why not now?