NukeBinObj
.NET · C# · AI-generatedA command-line tool to nuke the bin/ and obj/ folders of a Visual Studio solution. Trivially useful, written almost entirely by an agent — a small experiment in letting one drive.
Architect of quiet
systems that last.
I'm Marcus — a software architect and deputy department head at octo education. Almost three decades in the trade, mostly .NET, increasingly thinking out loud about how AI is rewriting the way we design, build and own software.
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28+ yrs · architecture
01NOW
What I'm thinking about, right now.
A weather-report of in-flight work. Updated when something genuinely shifts — not weekly, not on a schedule.
Currently building
AI-assisted refactor playbook for legacy .NET monoliths.
Pairing Cursor, Codex and Claude on a 12-year-old codebase and writing down what actually works, what wastes a week, and what to never let an agent touch.
Internal — octo educationCurrently writing
The shape of code review when half the diff is AI-authored.
Follow-up to "Excellence or Average?" — looking at how senior judgement scales (or doesn't) when juniors and copilots both ship faster than reviewers can read.
Draft · ~3,200 wordsCurrently learning
Graph databases beyond the demo.
Re-reading Neo4j patterns and trying to figure out where they earn their keep against a well-modelled relational schema. Honest answer so far: narrower than the hype.
Cypher · Neo4j · DDD02ABOUT
Almost thirty years of shipping software, and still curious.
I've been writing code since the late nineties, professionally since 2000, and architecting systems for the better part of two decades. The constant: .NET, distributed systems, and a stubborn interest in the seams between teams and the code they ship.
Today I lead engineering for a department at octo education (formerly Datenlotsen), where I get to spend my time on the questions I care about: how do small teams build software that doesn't collapse under its own weight, and how do we adopt AI tooling without giving up the parts of the craft that matter.
I write about it — sometimes opinionated, occasionally wrong, hopefully useful — on blog.beranek.de.
"After watching different people make the same mistakes for three decades, I figured it was time to write a few of them down." — from the blog's about page
Based in
Tornesch, Schleswig-Holstein
Role
Deputy Head, Technical Components
Company
octo education (formerly Datenlotsen)
Background
Physics · Maths · CS, HHU Düsseldorf
Open to
Talks, mentoring, advisory
Off-keyboard
Guitar, garden, balcony solar
03WRITING
Notes from the blog.
Software architecture, the craft of teams, and the slow-burn rewrite of everything by AI. Long-form, irregular, opinionated.
Featured
Transforming legacy frameworks into modern applications: a pragmatic approach.
You can't rewrite your way out of a fifteen-year-old framework. You also can't keep extending it forever. Here's the messy middle — what to lift, what to leave, and how to know the difference.
Read the piece →
02
22 Mar
03
19 Mar
04
18 Mar
05
12 Mar
06
26 Feb
07
26 Feb
Is 'Pick Two' still valid in the age of AI?
MCP comparison: Cursor, Copilot, and Codex in Azure DevOps.
Excellence or average? Navigating code quality in development teams.
What about security in AI development?
Is prompting a kind of DSL?
Why AI can't dance: the limits of ML in artistry.
AI·12
Best Practices·8
Patterns·6
Leadership·5
Tools·4
Frameworks·3
DDD·3
Security·2
Science·2
Agile·2
All posts on blog.beranek.de →
04WORK
Where I've spent the last twenty-five years.
A short list of companies. A long list of bugs.
2024 — present
Deputy Head of Department, Technical Components
Leading the technical components org. Architecture direction, team health, AI tooling rollout, and the boring-but-essential work of making other people's days easier.
octo education
2015 — 2023
Senior Software Developer · Architect · Team Lead
Architecture and senior delivery across distributed .NET systems. Scrum, Kanban, Crystal — whichever the team would actually use. Grew teams from 2 to 20.
octo education (then Datenlotsen) · Hamburg
2009 — 2014
Senior Software Developer
Service-oriented .NET architectures, identity, web. The years I learned the difference between clever and maintainable.
enpenet GmbH · Hamburg
2008 — 2009
Software Developer
First full-time role after graduation. Shipped early, broke things, learned to read other people's code.
enpenet · Cuxhaven
2000 — 2008
Freelance Software Developer
Eight years freelancing in parallel with university — Dynamo Deutschland and various studios. Built things, wrote a few articles for freeX, and won a Linux-Magazin programming contest along the way.
Various · Düsseldorf
05SKILLS
The toolkit.
I'm an architect first. The languages, frameworks and patterns are means — but here's an honest map of what's currently sharp.
My core expertise sits in Microsoft technologies — .NET since its inception, Azure DevOps, Git-based workflows. But the work I actually do is design: service-oriented architectures, microservices, identity, and the shape of teams that ship them. Increasingly, that means asking where AI fits, and where it doesn't.
Architecture / 01
PatternsSOA / Microservices
UMLBPMNDDDEvent-driven
.NET stack / 02
.NETC#ASP.NET Core
.NET StandardWCFWPFEF Core
AI tooling / 03
CursorCodexClaude
CopilotMCPPrompting as DSL
Data / 04
SQLMS SQL Server
Neo4jCypherGraph DBs
Web & concurrency / 05
HTML5CSS3JavaScriptWebWorker
TPLasync/awaitThread-Pool
Security & identity / 06
OAuthOpenID
Identity managementThreat modelling
Process / 07
ScrumKanbanCrystalLean
Other languages / 08
C++CJavaPascalPerlXSLT
Ops & tooling / 09
Azure DevOpsGit
LinuxWindows ServerDockerIISApache
06SOFTWARE
Side projects, open-source, and stubborn weekends.
Small tools, mostly. Some shipped, some forgotten, all built because they scratched an itch.
SmartCon
.NET · C# · NuGetA small collection of console utilities — commandline processing, prompting, formatting. The library I keep accidentally rewriting in every project, so I finally packaged it.
Glossary
VS Extension · .NETA Visual Studio extension that adds a glossary to your solution. Because every long-lived codebase quietly grows its own vocabulary, and someone should write it down.
DesktopRuler
.NET · C# · WPFA pixel ruler that sits on your desktop. Looks silly, used daily. Still my most-installed thing.
SqlGui
Qt · C++A cross-platform database frontend for MySQL and PostgreSQL. The project that taught me about long-term maintenance — by failing at it.
Prototype
Qt · C++ · 2003A document tool for writing technical protocols. Won the Linux-Magazin programming contest in 6/2003. Bringing it up now mostly for the historical record.
TOMTeC
.NET · C#The One Million-th Tetris Clone. Exactly what it sounds like — and one of the most enjoyable things I've ever procrastinated with.
Nasty Tanks
Java · AndroidAn old-school retro tank game for Android, written in a phase where I wanted to remember why games are hard. Spoiler: they are.
07EDUCATION
Where the foundations were laid.
1994 — 2005
Heinrich Heine Universität, Düsseldorf
Physics · Mathematics · Computer Science
University
1993 — 1994
Community Service
Civilian service · Düsseldorf
Zivildienst
1988 — 1993
Humboldt-Gymnasium, Düsseldorf
High School · Abitur
Gymnasium
1984 — 1988
Lise-Meitner-Gymnasium, Düsseldorf
Lower secondary
Gymnasium
1980 — 1984
Brehm-Grundschule, Düsseldorf
Primary school
Grundschule
08ALWAYS LEARNING
Things I've recently found worth re-reading.
A slow-moving feed of papers, talks, and posts that shifted my thinking. Curated, not aggregated.
09OFF-KEYBOARD
The bits of me that aren't software.
Beyond the laptop I'm into technology, smart gadgets, and sustainable energy — including a balcony solar setup that I'm slightly too proud of. I find balance away from the screen in playing guitar, dancing, and doing things with my hands, mostly in the garden.
In another life I wrote articles for the German technology magazine freeX. The magazine has since been discontinued, but the habit of writing things down stuck.
10CONTACT
Tell me about your system.
Or just say hi.
Speaking, advisory, mentoring, or a conversation about how AI is reshaping the way you ship — happy to talk. Email is the fastest path.
Emailmarcus@beranek.de
Mobile+49 (0)170 — 80 88 773
AddressMoorreger Weg 22
25436 Tornesch · Germany
25436 Tornesch · Germany
LinkedInmarcus-beranek
GitHub@kenareb
XingMarcus_Beranek