# Joachim Zeelmaekers

> Personal blog by Joachim Zeelmaekers, a software engineer based in Belgium writing about the craft of software engineering, career growth, and lessons learned since 2018.

## Blog Posts

- [Why "It Still Works" Is an Expensive Lie in Software](https://joachimz.me/the-cost-of-keeping-what-you-should-remove/): Great products aren't built by adding more. They're shaped by the discipline to remove what no longer earns its place.
- [What Code Reviews Actually Teach Us](https://joachimz.me/code-reviews/): A reflection on why code reviews matter, why they feel personal, and how they protect teams from costly mistakes.
- [Commitment Without Agreement: What Great Teams Understand](https://joachimz.me/what-great-teams-understand/): The best engineering teams share four traits: full commitment to decisions, separating ideas from identity, pragmatic judgment, and informed captains.
- [One Month of Writing in Public: What the Numbers Say](https://joachimz.me/one-month-of-writing-in-public-what-the-numbers-actually-say/): I committed to publishing one article weekly. The hardest part wasn't the writing, but the engagement. Here's what the numbers revealed.
- [Revisiting: Clean Up Your Code by Applying These 7 Rules](https://joachimz.me/revisiting-clean-up-your-code-by-applying-these-7-rules/): A reflection on clean code, five years later. What still holds up, what feels incomplete, and how experience changed how I think about cleanup.
- [Architecture Without Constraints Is Just Speculation](https://joachimz.me/architecture-without-constraints-is-just-speculation/): Over-engineering early products slows development and increases costs long before scale becomes real.
- [A More Practical Way for Developers to Learn Algorithms](https://joachimz.me/a-more-practical-way-for-developers-to-learn-algorithms/): Many developers assume performance is for specialists. Stacksmith lets you learn and experience how algorithmic choices impact every language.
- [The First 5 Years as a Software Engineer](https://joachimz.me/the-first-5-years-as-a-software-engineer/): I'll take you through "the good, the bad, and the ugly" of what I experienced in the first 5 years of my career.
- [Respecting What Came Before](https://joachimz.me/respecting-what-came-before/): A reflection on old code, missing context, and the importance of understanding past decisions in software development.
- [Listening Through a Year of Change](https://joachimz.me/listening-through-a-year-of-change/): A quiet year in review through audiobooks on software, resilience, perspective, and becoming a first-time father.
- [5 phases to create a 5-year growth plan as a developer](https://joachimz.me/5-phases-to-create-a-5-year-growth-plan/): 5 phases to solve the question "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" as a developer.
- [What I Did to Survive My First Years as a Developer](https://joachimz.me/what-i-did-to-survive-my-first-years-as-a-developer/): The list of rules that I applied to become a complete developer at the start of my career.
- [Tips and tricks for choosing your first job as a developer](https://joachimz.me/why-money-should-not-be-your-main-motivation/): I think it's important that developers realise that they should first find out what they want to do before they chase the money.
- [Clean Up Your Code by Applying These 7 Rules](https://joachimz.me/clean-up-your-code-by-applying-these-7-rules/): In this post, I will go over some of the rules that you can apply to improve your code.
- [My Solution to Stop Telling Myself to Read More](https://joachimz.me/my-solution-to-stop-telling-myself-to-read-more/): So I used to tell myself that I should read more non-fiction books. But it never happened and here's why...
- [The 6 Things I Do to Motivate Myself Every Single Day](https://joachimz.me/the-6-things-i-do-to-motivate-myself-every-single-day/): How I stay motivated every single day as a freelancer with a full-time job.
- [5 tips to break up your workdays while working from home as a developer](https://joachimz.me/how-not-to-burn-out/): While working from home, I find it's even more difficult to close up the workday.
- [Why you should consider using a publishing platform for your blog](https://joachimz.me/why-you-should-consider-using/): When you consider a blog as one of your side projects, you might want to pick an existing platform and here's why.
- [The end of a challenging year](https://joachimz.me/the-end-of-a-challenging-year/): There is light at the end of the road!

## Pages

- [About](https://joachimz.me/about/): About Joachim Zeelmaekers
- [Blog](https://joachimz.me/blog/): All articles
- [RSS Feed](https://joachimz.me/rss.xml): RSS feed for all posts