Personal Profile

Daniel MerkSoftware Developer
Langenau, Germania

Hi, I’m Daniel. Since 2001 I am a professional software developer in the mobile communications industry, which is a highly interesting one to be in right now. Not only does it have a profound influence on how we live our lives. Since about a decade the industry also sees an enormous change in its underlying assumptions about how products are created. While mobile communication has traditionally been an electrical engineering discipline, it is today large-scale software development.

I always had a huge interest in practical physics. My education is officially that of an electrical engineer. In my free-time however I’ve been drawn to computers and programming since I was a child. My first computer was a Commodore C64 which I started to program in BASIC at the age of eight. Today I am lucky to combine programming and physics in my professional work. Consequently, I love to pioneer and advance the areas where software engineering infiltrates traditional engineering. Especially, since it became so important not only to mobile communications, but also all other engineering businesses and disciplines, be it automotive, automation technology or medical engineering.

I am obsessed with clean code since I read "Refactoring" by Kent Beck and "Design Patterns" by the GoF. That was over 20 years ago. Over time this was amended by the lean and agile paradigms. I started to see software development in a broader context that does not only have a technical side, but also an organizational and human one. I was strongly influenced by Bas Vodde, who I had the pleasure to work with as a coach.

Work is not everything. I find fulfillment in my family life, which is determined by my wonderful girlfriend and my three amazing kids. I love music and learn to play the piano since a few years. I do sports, which consists of a fitness workout regimen during the week and hiking tours in the alps on the weekends (while I enjoy the latter generally more).

I am based near the city of Ulm, in the beautiful south of Germany.