Martin Stühmer

Who I Am

I’m Martin, CTO at Integrated Worlds GmbH in the Stuttgart region. I’ve been building .NET systems for nearly 20 years—since Framework 2.0 when SOAP was cutting-edge and ORMs were controversial.

Today I lead technology strategy for cloud-native solutions on Azure. Before this, I was Director Consulting Services at CGI, working with enterprise teams on architecture and transformation. I’m a Microsoft Certified Trainer and IHK-certified instructor, and I maintain several open-source NuGet packages.

What I Do

As CTO, I don’t just make decisions from a distance. I write code, review PRs, debug production issues, and mentor teams. Technology leadership means staying hands-on and feeling the consequences of your choices.

As a trainer and mentor, I focus on fundamentals that outlast framework hype. Static analyzers, testing strategies, performance patterns, maintainable architecture—the stuff that actually prevents production fires.

As an open-source maintainer, I publish packages that solve problems I’ve hit repeatedly in real systems. When strangers depend on your code, you write better tests and clearer docs.

What I’ve Learned

Almost two decades means I’ve made every mistake: over-engineered systems, bet on Silverlight and WCF (oops), built “flexible” architectures that were just complicated, shipped code I’m not proud of.

Here’s what stuck:

  • Quality isn’t optional – Analyzers catch bugs in milliseconds, tests prevent regressions, and both are faster than firefighting
  • Fundamentals outlast frameworks – Patterns and principles survive; specific tools don’t always
  • Context beats dogma – “Best practices” depend on your team, domain, and constraints
  • Evidence beats opinion – Measure, benchmark, validate before deciding
  • Pragmatism wins – Good-enough architecture that ships beats perfect architecture that doesn’t

What I Write About

I share perspectives from production systems and real teams. I’m skeptical of buzzword-driven development and allergic to cargo-cult practices. If a trend lacks substance or a pattern doesn’t hold up under pressure, I’ll say so.

This blog is for developers, solution architects and operators who maintain production systems and care about quality, not just shipping fast.

Published blogs

Alphabet Soup: The Format Buffet Nobody Ordered

Alphabet Soup: The Format Buffet Nobody Ordered

Developers wanted one format. We got twenty. CSV mangles data, XML drowns in tags, JSON forbids comments, YAML punishes spaces. TOML tried fixing it. TAML went minimal. TOON optimized for AI. CCL brought category theory. Result? Five formats per project, three parsers, and debugging why NO became false. AI can’t save us either. Welcome to format hell.
Why Real Professionals Will Never Be Replaced by AI

Why Real Professionals Will Never Be Replaced by AI

The elephant everyone ignores: AI can generate code faster than you can type. GitHub Copilot autocompletes entire functions. ChatGPT builds APIs from prompts. Typing is dead. So why will real professionals never be replaced? Because “vibe coding”—describe what you want, ship what AI generates—is a productivity illusion that collapses spectacularly in production. When code generation becomes trivial, understanding what that code costs, where it fails, why it breaks under load becomes everything. AI generates syntax. Professionals understand execution, failure modes, operational cost, and production consequences. The differentiator isn’t typing speed—it’s mastering the feedback loop: write code, watch it fail, understand why, refine thinking. This discipline can’t be automated. Prompt engineers generate code. Real professionals ensure it survives contact with reality.
2025 in Review: The Year .NET Stopped Lying to Itself

2025 in Review: The Year .NET Stopped Lying to Itself

Forget the hype—2025 was when .NET tooling finally stopped pretending complexity doesn’t exist Three tools won by being honest: Aspire exposed topology, TUnit killed flaky tests, Testcontainers made infrastructure real
.NET CLI 10 – Microsoft Finally Realizes DevOps Exists

.NET CLI 10 – Microsoft Finally Realizes DevOps Exists

The .NET CLI? Reliable. Boring. You run dotnet build, dotnet test, dotnet publish, done. Real DevOps work happens in Dockerfiles, CI/CD configs, and specialized tools. The CLI does its job but was never built for actual operational workflows.

.NET 10 changes this. Four additions that sound minor but fix real problems I’ve hit in production pipelines for years: native container publishing, ephemeral tool execution, better cross-platform packaging, and machine-readable schemas. Not flashy. Not keynote material. But they’re the kind of improvements that save hours every week once you’re running them at scale.

Will they replace your current workflow? Depends on what you’re building. Let’s look at what actually changed.