Barend Erasmus

This is where I share thoughts, ideas, and things I'm working on — sometimes technical, sometimes personal. Just me, writing about what matters to me.

Featured

• I Tried to Catch a Systems Paper Before the Internet Did

  Published:4 May, 2026 |  at 03:40 PM

  What happened when I tried to turn a fresh systems paper about integer formatting into a small C++ library before the wider internet had settled around it.

• Debugging Berlin’s Housing Market

  Published:18 Dec, 2025 |  at 03:32 PM

  How an Engineer Approaches an Impossible Problem.

• The €1.00 Pull Request: My Weekend with Gemini CLI

  Published:9 Dec, 2025 |  at 09:01 AM

  I spent a weekend coding with Gemini CLI. It cost €1.00 for one refactoring task. Here is my analysis of the real cost of AI-assisted development.

• Why People Follow Leaders

  Published:23 Aug, 2025 |  at 02:29 PM

  What actually makes people lean in and decide, 'Yes, I’ll go with you'?

Recent Posts

• The Impact Managers Don't See

  Published:4 Aug, 2026 |  at 08:55 AM

  Managers may shape careers, but the trust people place in them can influence lives in ways no quarterly metric can capture.

• Building an Event Loop From Scratch

  Published:26 May, 2026 |  at 09:43 AM

  A hands-on walk from a blocking TCP echo server to a tiny kqueue-based event loop, using C++ to demystify what Node hides behind socket callbacks.

• Learning C++ by Implementing SOCKS5

  Published:11 May, 2026 |  at 02:07 PM

  I started my career writing C and C++ for embedded systems. Then I didn't touch it for over a decade. This is the story of going back, with SOCKS5 as the excuse.

• Hello, World, but Without an Operating System

  Published:9 May, 2026 |  at 11:00 AM

  What happens when you take the most familiar first program in software development and remove the operating system underneath it.

• Why I'm Still Building Side Projects After All These Years

  Published:16 Apr, 2026 |  at 09:33 PM

  Side projects have been one of the most valuable ways for me to learn. They give me a space to experiment, and that experience matters more than theory.

• Hiring Software Engineers: The 3 Shifts That Instantly Improve Your Hiring Process

  Published:12 Apr, 2026 |  at 05:29 PM

  Most engineering hiring processes fail because they look for the wrong signals. Here are three shifts that make your process more practical, consistent, and predictive.

• Coding Agents Are a Shortcut to Output, Not a Shortcut to Judgment

  Published:6 Apr, 2026 |  at 04:43 PM

  If you want better results from coding agents, do not just prompt for the destination. Prompt for the steps. That is the real skill.

• How to Explain Complex Systems to Non-Technical Stakeholders Without Dumbing Them Down

  Published:22 Mar, 2026 |  at 12:17 PM

  Explaining technical problems clearly to non-technical audiences is one of the most valuable skills a technical lead can develop. Here are the habits that help most.