Philipp Jung
Data engineer in Berlin. Notes on technology, pipelines, tooling, and the occasional detour.
Writing 29 posts
2026
Jun 10 Football World Cup It's World Cup season, and it keeps delivering: dubious referee decisions, fans marching the streets celebrating and sometimes disrupting opposing teams' sleep and, of course, underdogs standing their ground against the great football nations' teams. 2025
Dec 23 My Language Learning Setup 2025 A year ago, I decided to learn Spanish more seriously. I use Rosetta Stone to learn grammar and new vocabulary, and Anki to review flashcards. Sep 14 Tips for Traveling in China as a European in 2025 For the past ten days my journey across China has been an amazing experience. The country is vast, yet its infrastructure is fantastic[^1], making it surprisingly convenient to explore. Apr 6 Going Wired I recently went down the rabbit hole of improving video conferencing quality. I found that replacing wireless equipment with wired equipment was both cost-efficient and effective in improving remote video conferencing quality. 2024
Nov 6 Currency Conversion In A Data Warehouse Nov 2 Finding the Closest Element in a Sorted Array A coding problem about finding the 'most central' element in an array, which can be elegantly simplified by applying some maths. Oct 14 Efficient Data Export from Firestore to BigQuery I discuss two different approaches to transferring data from Firestore to BigQuery. Sep 26 Synology Backup in Google Cloud Storage Archives I own a Synology DS223j NAS and went on great lengths to figure out the ideal way of backing up my data on Google Cloud Storage. 2023
Jun 26 The smartest Person in a Jazz Band: Thoughts on Working in a Team I read 'The Passionate Programmer' by Chad Fowler, which made me think about teamwork. May 20 Escaping the CSV Trap and Embracing Alternatives After half a decade of loading structured data from CSVs, I share my thoughts on data formats and their implications for data practitioners. Feb 5 Tabular Data Transferring Patterns Patterns I notice in in practice when transferring and loading tabular data. 2022
Oct 16 Trust Thoughts on performance under pressure. Aug 13 I Underestimated The Importance of Tooling On the benefits of using the right tool for the right job. Jan 14 Zeal and Dash for Reading Developer Documentation It feels really good to use Zeal and Dash to read developer documentation. Jan 14 Automating Backups With Btrbk On Fedora 34 A rough guide to setting up a backup routine on a machine running Fedora 34. 2021
Jan 17 Predicting the Beginning of the End With early vaccination data from the Robert Koch Institute, I run a linear regression to get an estimate to predict when the Germans will reach herd immunity. 2020
Jul 29 Mutable Objects in JavaScript Mutable data structures are tricky to work with, which is a tripping wire when updating state in a React app. Feb 18 Languages, Fast and Slow Some wisdom I learned from a friend about slow programming languages. Jan 5 Learning Relaxations A summary of the work I did in my Master's thesis. 2019
Nov 3 The Essence of Backups in Linux Fundamental thoughts on how to get started with backups on Linux. Oct 17 Easy Concurrency in Python I've written a bunch of Python code that needs to run faster. Here is what I learned, easily digestible in a guide. Aug 10 Testing Scientific Code - How to Get Away with Bad Code Some thoughts on how scientists can test their code. Jun 29 Learn Programming without a Background in Computer Science A few ideas on how to get started with programming without having studied CS. Mar 13 Nebenhörer in Berlin In 2019 habe ich an allen Berliner Universitäten Kurse belegt. Ich erzähle von meiner Erfahrung. Feb 14 Was ich von Ansgar Oberholz gelernt habe Im St. Oberholz am Rosenthaler Platz habe ich Ansgar Oberholz kennengelernt und von ihm übers Gründen gelernt. Jan 6 Wie ich meine morgendliche Bildschirmzeit reduziert habe Ich verbringe etwas mehr Zeit mit meinem Smartphone, als mir lieb ist. Und zeige, was ich angestellt habe, um weniger Zeit mit meinem Smartphone zu verbringen. 2018
Oct 19 Fahrradverleih in Berlin Ein Vergleich von Berliner Leihfarradanbietern. Oct 19 Das ganze Jahr Fahrradfahren Ein Erfahrungsbericht, wie ich im Winter in Berlin Fahrrad fahre. Sep 9 A country for old men Überlegungen zum Leben in einem Land mit der ältesten Bevölkerung weltweit.