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đź‘‹ Hey, I'm RĂ©mi

First, let’s address the elephant in the room:

“How are we supposed to pronouce your name, Rémi?”

Fear not, I’m here to help.

So, my full name is Rémi Mercier. It’s pronounced: ray · me · mercy · 'ey .

If you want to pronouce it like I do, you’ll have to roll those Rs.

Now that you’re baguette-ready, let us dive in.

Who am I?

I’m an (almost) forty-year old programmer, writer, and former stained-glass master (yep).

an out-of-focus picture of my face
An out-of-focus picture of my face (shot by my kiddos with a Prima Twin S)

Mountainous Drôme has been my family’s home for the past 3 years. I love living there: quieter pace, beautiful landscapes and amazing food.

a view of a foggy mountain from afar

Main occupation: software engineer

I’ve worked in tech for ten years, and I’ve been a professional developer for the past four and a half years, mainly focusing on back-end programming. Before being a programmer, I worked in product and marketing for startups. Before that, I held an awful lot of positions, both in non-tech fields for almost 15 years.

I was a stained-glass maker for four years. Moved on to museums and art galleries. Switched to marketing for tech start-ups. Then ended-up doing programming. It’s quite the story!

Interested in the professional side of things? Head over to the dedicated page.

Writing

I run this website where I share what I learned while building software. It’s my way of giving back to the dev community. My posts are often featured in Ruby Weekly, HN, etc… As of 2022, more than 18,700 unique visitors visited this website. Some articles even got me invited on podcasts.

My top 3 articles are:

I’m still tinkering on sharing more unedited content on this website (and I still haven’t figure it out). But right now, I like to write unedited notes (called “fragments”) and short personal tweet-like things.

First and foremost, I love to write stories. I usually latch out on a subject and write quirky things about it. This website is no exception.

Newsletter

As of early 2023, my newsletter is just a good way to receive my new posts before anyone else.

We’re slowly closing in on 200 subscribers from all over the world!

I’m still looking to make it a more creative space. This will probably evolve in 2023 as I explore new ways of supporting my writing work (stay tuned!).

Slow pace

We’ve talked a lot about “workish” things so far: coding, writing, etc. Let’s dive deeper.

A lot of my decisions - professional and personal - stem from the pursuit of a slower life.

Ten years ago, I embraced the motto “moving fast and breaking things”. After putting in long hours and working my health off for four years, I realized the things that end up breaking are (mostly) people. Since then, I’ve decided to examine what I care about deeply. And life rushing past me while I’m stuck in a rat race is not one of them.

So, slow pace.

No long hours. No meetings during lunch. No “stay at work” fuckery.

I like to bear witness to my life. I like to look through the window. I like doing things with purpose, calm, and pleasure. I like to sip warm coffee while listening to some records after dropping the kiddos to school.

Drawing, design and art stuff

Drawing has played a big part in my life.

dessins représentant la montage

When I was 14, a teacher suggested I study design and applied arts. He had spotted me drawing caricatures of my schoolmates instead of taking notes.

Design has taught me a few important lessons:

A few arty things I like a lot: romanesque architecture, stained-glass (obviously!), generative art (Matt Deslauriers ❤️)…

I also enjoy building things with my hands: some low-key woodworking, anything that could come up in restoring a 18-th century house (and let me tell you, A LOT can come up!).