Merge pull request #64 from RonaldSchlenker/main

Testimonial

src/content/testimonials/RonaldSchlenker.md

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+---
+title: Ronald Schlenker
+preview: For each Beginning Bears a Special Magic
+isDraft: true
+author: Ronald Schlenker
+slug: ronald.schlenker
+profilePicture: /images/authors/RonaldSchlenker.jpg
+---
+
+"Jedem Anfang wohnt ein Zauber inne" (Hermann Hesse; Stufen)
+===
+
+When the knot bursts and a problem is solved, when it suddenly looks so simple: That's a moment of joy for me. I feel that joy when knowledge turns into cognition. To make a long story short: If you are looking for that, then learning and using F# will perhaps be your thing. If you are looking for more, then read on.
+
+My Personal Way to F#
+---
+
+My first attempt to really get a thing done in F# was: Making music, or more precise: Sample-exact digital signal processing. DSP in general requires "state", which is: "Accessible values from past evaluations". DSP chains are usually composed from smaller building blocks, where each block has it's own "local" state. Using C# and objects was cumbersome: Objects have to be instanciated, their evaluation must explicitly triggered, which was error-prone and annoying. I instead liked that "pure functions" thing: Just put a function at the right place in a computation - and that's it. That sounded very compelling, and the mission was clear: Find a way that allows for composing "state-aware" functions as simple as if they were pure functions. And that's how my journey begun.
+
+Bring Back the Joy
+---
+
+The outcome of approaching a problem is usually so much more than just the solution you were looking for. While learning F#, I stumbled upon didactic masters such as Scott Wlaschin, whom probably almost every F# developer knows. His legendary "F# For Fun and Profit", talks like "Four Languages From Forty Years Ago" or the book "Domain Modeling Made Functional" turbo-boosted my thinkung and dev-skills. There's a lot of money to make by selling trainings, scrum-here, agile-there, architecture-whatever. Buy it all - gladly also from me. And: Dig into Scott Wlaschin's stuff. It's a treasure chest filled with knowledge and rebooted my joy in programming.
+
+Taking every possible turn on my journey, I discovered people like Krzysztof Cieślak, who virtually single-handedly created the F# extension "Ionide" for VSCode from scratch. There's Tomas Petricek, a master mind who's doing tons of crazy-cool stuff, from academic papers to talks like "Write your own Excel in 100 lines of F#" or his hand-crafted F#-written Commodore C64 emulator. To me, this is just lovely, sympathetic, and personal: There's someone trying to honestly share his knowledge and ideas, by addressing the good memories of your younger self. Isn't that a masterpiece in communication? Who doesn't want to learn from such people?
+
+The F# Community is rather small, but filled with those unique and highly-skilled personalities. More than that, I felt that they are all welcoming, friendly, approachable and willing to help. From my personal experience, most F# users care a lot about improving, developing and spreading F#. It's easy for anyone to get involved. There are so much possibilities from commenting, writing or implementing language features, contributing to libraries, writing own stuff and getting in touch with others: It's all easy and low-barrier. Instead of "strong opinions", I experienced open-minds and thoughtfulness. I have no doubt that talent and hard work can be keys to success, but I'm also convinced that you can get as far with curiosity and joy.
+
+Old School Players to New School Fools
+---
+
+A whole can be more than the sum of it's parts. That sounds trivial, and it means: Being part of something, knowing people and being bound to them in a good way, can release a lot of energy. It motivates, it brings joy and leads to new ideas and ways that weren't even seen before. Amplifying F# is an initiative founded by Edgar Gonzales, David Schaefer, Florian Verdonck, and Jimmy Byrd. They literally took the initiative, using all their talent, hard work, curiosity and joy to bring people together. It's already a success story, of which I'm proud to be now a part of.
+
+Things change; this is an inevitable truth. I'm honestly happy for people who took a step and moved on. While this might create a vacuum or lead to sadness, there are alternatives we can choose from: Knowing that we have something great in our hands, we can turn sadness into happiness. Get things going, keep things rolling. Don't wait for others, and take initiative, get involved and be a part of something new. It's all on us.
+
+Steps (Hermann Hesse, 1941; translated by Walter A. Aue)
+---
+
+```
+Like ev’ry flower wilts, like youth is fading
+and turns to age, so also one’s achieving:
+Each virtue and each wisdom needs parading
+in one’s own time, and must not last forever.
+The heart must be, at each new call for leaving,
+prepared to part and start without the tragic,
+without the grief – with courage to endeavor
+a novel bond, a disparate connection:
+for each beginning bears a special magic
+that nurtures living and bestows protection.
+
+We’ll walk from space to space in glad progression
+and should not cling to one as homestead for us.
+The cosmic spirit will not bind nor bore us;
+it lifts and widens us in ev’ry session:
+for hardly set in one of life’s expanses
+we make it home, and apathy commences.
+But only he, who travels and takes chances,
+can break the habits’ paralyzing stances.
+
+It might be, even, that the last of hours
+will make us once again a youthful lover:
+The call of life to us forever flowers...
+Anon, my heart: Say farewell and recover!
+```