Recent content on Jonathan Thaler @ lambda::bytes
Software is not a goal. Solving complex technical problems is not a goal. Writing bug-free code is not a goal. Using sexy programming languages is not a goal. Add revenue. Reduce costs. Those are your only goals. – Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice by Patrick McKenzie 
 After having spent 2 months last year using Cursor for coding with AI using suggestions…
From October-December 2024 I was looking for new job opportunities. To make the most of my time during this gap, I embarked on a little project with the aim of deepening my Rust experience implementing DDD and Microservices on top of a simple web UI in Rust with WASM. Also in this project, I explored the use of LLMs in my coding for the first time. I wrote daily updates and reflections on it,…
For 2.5 years, from Feb 2022 to Aug 2024, I have been working as contractor at Generation Lambda where I was part of the team that built Axo , a decentralised trading protocol on the Cardano blockchain. Initially I joined as Senior Haskell developer, but transitioned into a Tech Lead position after ~8 months. 
 Due to the fact that Cardano, its libraries and smart contract language are built…
To me writing has always been an integral part of my life, that is, I wrote regularly and I enjoyed writing. To me writing is an important process on many levels: it acts as a thinking and reflection process by articulating and structuring my at time chaotic thoughts. By expressing and making vague thoughts explicit, writing also acts as a cleansing process, by getting to the bottom of some…
12 months ago I started working in a full-remote job as Senior Software Engineer at Generation Lambda . It was a substantial change for me in my working discipline, having never worked in a fully-remote environment. Yes, when I was working as lecturer there were the COVID-19 lockdowns during which I had to switch my back-then teaching job into full-remote for roughly 3 semesters. However, teaching…
I am an experienced software engineer and architect, skilled systems thinker and designer, problem solver and passionate team lead with over 18 years (as of 2025) of work experience in industry and academia. 
 I aim to combine the best of pragmatic industry engineering and principled academic research, having developed my skill set around practising software engineering as well as systems…
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. - Frank Herbert, Dune 
 In the night of Saturday 5th November 2011 I died and was reborn.…
From end of February 2022 to end of June 2022 I taught digital education to 10-14 year olds at the Free Montessory School in Altach , Vorarlberg. The experience was profound, very rewarding - as it is always when working with kids - and added a new kind of experience and dimension to my teaching skills and portfolio. 
 First and foremost it was not an intellectual challenge but a pedagogical…
Nearly 2 weeks ago, on 15th June I gave my last lecture as lecturer in Software Engineering at FHV. To round off my experience at FHV and as a little gift to the students I decided to change it into a farewell lecture, where I would give a retrospective of my last 20 years as student, software engineer and lecturer. When I entered the lecture hall I was surprised: word has spread around of my…
Last week the Software Engineering course I teach in the undergraduates Computer Science degree finished. I want to take this as an opportunity to reflect on the course, its motivation, its visions, its implications and its impact. 
 I took over the course from my predecessor (who retired in summer 2020) and redesigned and reshaped it completely from the ground up to my vision of what a…
Defect Process is a 2D hack n’ slash platform game released on Steam and implemented in Haskell. The interesting thing is that the partial source code was released on GitHub , available to be cloned, built and executed (if you own a copy of Defect Process). 
 Although the developers have written a short Defect Process Overview which is great for a start, in the following I attempt a more…
Since 22nd November 2021 we are back in Distance Learning. I have written about my deep frustration with this situation in Back in Distance Learning - a call to Students . In this post I want to reflect on and rethink my role as teacher in these times. 
 I love to teach . This is the reason why I took up this job and I belive I have some natural talent for this profession. Let me stress the…
The new semester is about to start soon and I will be taking my share of duties also in the computer science masters degree where I will be teaching Concepts of higher programming languages (an introductory course to functional programming concepts in Haskell on a masters level, where students are expected to be quite experienced in an OO language such as Java). 
 In the introductory lesson of…
TODO add Articles to my Website where i write about my technical findings: put it under research 
 It rests on the idea and belief that software design principles and concepts are independent from the programming language. How the respective principles are implemented however does depend completely on the chosen language. 
 Hypothesis: the principles we are using in OOP to write…
I started my job as lecturer in February 2020. I knew the first two years in my job are going to be tough due to the substantial effort required to prepare my courses. It started quite conventient with a fairly relaxed first semester as my predecessor was still there for his last semester and I was merely supporting him, while preparing some of my upcoming courses the following semester. I accrued…
Contrary to many people in the current Corona situation I can regard myself to be lucky: I did not lose my teaching job, nor was my working time reduced. I think for teaching this would have been a big surprise, especially for Computer Science (CS) because in this subject it is probably easier than for many others to switch to online teaching. 
 This is what my university did: within 3 days…
Life is and should be a constant learning endeavour and we should never give up on learning new things. This is what we are here for, face it. That is the task we as mankind have undertaken and we are good at it - in fact we are that good at it so that over tens of thousands of years we rose to the top of the game. This is how we work as a species and as individuals.
Today I read the great article Are we really engineers? which reminded me about the difference I make between Coder and Developer which in turn made me reflect the question of When do students become Developers? 
 To me, a Coder is someone, who… codes. It is all about cracking out many lines of code and about getting stuff done without too much thinking about architecture and code…
I have come to the conclusion that Software Engineering is primarily a learning endeavour, the working code is rather a side effect . 
 This quote is actually not mine but I am paraphrasing Alberto Brandolini who is making this very point in Event Storming (he was actually talking about Software Development, but I do not want to get into an academic discussion on the differences between…
I am teaching Haskell in the 1st semester CS master programme course Concepts of Higher Programming Languages at the FHV . Why did I decide for Haskell and not Python, JavaScript (JS), TypeScript (TS), Scala, Erlang, Rust, Your Favourite Programming Language ? 
 At this point I assume and expect that students are not only familiar with mainstream object-oriented programming (Java, C#) but that…
lambda::bytes provides training, teaching, consulting and development services in the fields of Software Development and Computer Simulation . 

 Software Development ¶ 
 We focus on Domain-Driven Design (DDD) using (pure) functional programming in Haskell (Backend) and Elm (Frontend) in complex real-world projects to create reliable, robust and performant solutions. Besides Functioal…
In search for Aikido perfection, Computer Science enlightenment and of what lies beyond the Abyss. 

 10 Years of Industry Experience ¶ 
 Set-Top Box C/C++ Firmware, Cobol Backend Maintenance, Java Swing Frontends, SCADA C/C++ Software,
Java Spring Backend, JavaScript Frontends, Java EE Backends, React Frontends, Haskell Web Backend,
Cardano Blockchain. 

 8 Years of…
During my time in academy I produced a number of publications, which you find below. 
 
 
 Thaler, J., & Siebers, P. O. (2020). Specification testing of agent-based simulation using property-based testing. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 34(2), 1-22. 
 
 
 Thaler, J., & Siebers, P. O. (2019). A tale of lock-free agents: towards Software Transactional Memory in…
Here you will find opinionated reflections on various topics. The opinions are my own and do not reflect those of any of my current or past employers. 
 
 Software Engineering in times of AI and LLMs (23/08/2025) 
 Reflections on my Cardano-Haskell Experience (11/04/2025) 
 Why and How I Write (09/04/2023) 
 Working in a full-remote job (14/02/2023) 
 My Death and Rebirth…
For roughly eight years in my life I have taken up the pleasures and responsibilities of teaching, which I eventually quit. I have taught in different positions in different institutions in different places on Earth. Below you find a brief summary of each in chronological order. 

 University of Applied Sciences, Vorarlberg (Sep 2014 - Sep 2016) ¶ 
 My first real teaching experience…
Erlang in Agent-Based Simulation ¶ 
 The dominant approach to implementing ABS is object-oriented due to the established opinion that agents map naturally to objects . However, agents have their origins in the concept of actors and therefore should map more naturally to actors instead of objects. The actor-based functional programming language Erlang should therefore be the ideal choice for…
An Architecture for a concurrent Game Engine ¶ 
 With the shift towards multi-core CPU hardware in the last decade, game engines needed to keep up with this progress to achieve best performance on this parallel hardware. Although game developers managed to exploit the parallel hardware, this achievement required substantial effort as the established object-oriented programming languages in the…
Football Tactics Simulation ¶ 
 The thesis should investigate to which extent ABS simulation can be used to investigate effectivity of various football tactics in standard situations. It might be combined with machine learning approaches. For a data centric approach, it a cooperation with a football club could be sought. 
 Requirements: 
 
 Interest and knowledge of football and…
Property-Based Testing in object-oriented TDD ¶ 
 Property-Based Testing allows to express functional specifications in code, checking them by random test-case generation. It is a complementary technique to unit testing and has its origins in the functional programming language Haskell. However, it has not seen much use in object-oriented programming so far. The aim of this thesis is the…
Quantum Computing in Simulation ¶ 
 In recent years, quantum computing has made tremendous improvements and moved into more feasible areas due to building of various quantum computers outside of military (e.g. Google). This has seen the rise of various quantum computing frameworks such as Q# by Microsoft. 
 This thesis should investigate the nature of quantum computing as oposed to…
Physically Based Ray Tracing on the GPU ¶ 
 In recent years hardware support for ray tracing in GPUs has become popular to achieve high fidelity effects in modern computer games. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the hardware support for ray tracing in GPUs for its applicability in physically based rendering. The student should perform the following tasks: 
 
 Get accustomed…
Computability of the Simulation Argument ¶ 
 There is a long philosophical and scientific tradition which hypothesises that reality is an illusion. The most recent entry in this tradition is the so-called Simulation Hypothesis formulated by Nick Bostrom, which proposes that our reality is in fact a computer simulation. However, this raises the essential question of whether our reality is…
COVID-19 Vaccination Strategies on dynamic Networks ¶ 
 Most simulations of vaccination strategies against infectious diseases to prevent pandemics, consider static networks only. In this master thesis vaccination strategies on dynamic networks, which evolve over time, should be investigated. This thesis can build on the results from the Project Simulation and Optimisation .