Abilities
There is no perfect technology stack as there is no free lunch. Fundamentally, rejecting some technology based on hype, age or for being proprietary does not make a total sense. Technology is a tool to reach a business outcome and some tools are more efficient, that’s all.
Innovation is not linked to tooling. People and processes are the biggest drivers.
The techie
Let’s be honest here: I am a tech practitioner and that’s what I do best. Even though I dabble less and less with code, I have tried technologies in the past and there are some that I really liked and others that were more meh. Here are a couple lists that you should use to challenge me!
First, I feel quite confident with:
- AWS, its quirks and configuration languages;
- Terraform / OpenTofu;
- GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, etc. ;
- Serverless and container infrastructures, including Kubernetes;
- Delivering efficient organizations, products and services through DevOps practices;
- Web performance and engineering;
- HTML, CSS, JS. The latter can be frontend and backend;
- Static site generation.
I hope to discover these things over time:
- More cultures, company and local;
- Rust, its memory model, why it works;
- Ideas and tooling to reduce development and operational chores;
- More of Python and C#, because I don’t feel confident enough with them.
And here’s the weird stuff I had to deal with. It is milquetoast compared to some gray-beards around but here goes:
- OrientDB, a multi-model non relational database;
- Maxwell and Debezium, database deamons that retrieve operations and stream them to Kafka for event-based data processing workloads;
- MitreID and the OpenID Connect specification;
- OctoPerf and Gatling —thanks, I dislike Scala now— for good load tests;
- Yellowlab and WebpageTest for decent client-side web performance reporting. Add browser devtools, which get consistently better over time;
- AppDynamics, BlackFire and Sentry for the backend side of things.
The human
Stop for a moment and think about what you are projecting. Use personas and how they perceive you. This is a personal website, so this place is about you and you only. This section can be read by your future recruiter, your stalkers, your friends, random passersby.
The person described below is the one I face every day when I see myself in the proverbial mirror. These are things I genuinely believe I am projecting.
Being open to many topics, even those that are usually not talked about is my main thing. Social issues, economics, sustainability, inequality, conflict. I cannot bring a lot of references yet, but I’d love to bring hard facts and data, not just chit-chat, feelings and validation. Sometimes, I will express myself with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. In most occasions, I will just stay calm and listen.
Ambitious and driven at my core, I wish for my dream projects to come true. Let’s be realistic: I cannot change the whole planet, but my overall impact can be positive nonetheless. I lead by example and encourage people to do better with themselves and others. I go through things so that other people don’t have to.
To conclude on that part, challenge is my day-to-day. Sometimes I fight with myself, sometimes with weird code, sometimes to persuade somebody to follow different ways. Traversing a period without being challenged is boring, plus I cannot reasonably expect any reward from taking no risk, can I?
The other stuff
I enjoy trying new things and experimenting, it makes me think out of the box. Creativity is crucial when dealing with issues few faced before. This is again not limited to technology.
To me, minimalism is the way: reducing what gets used, collected, processed, stored. Lowering costs of design, development, delivery, maintenance and operation, and improving general satisfaction. This belief translates into strong advocacy for privacy. Tracking users is bad: following anyone on the street to know their habits is weird, why would this be “acceptable behavior” online? On a different note, I reduced my energy use by applying the same principles.
Other than that, I love trying new places, I do my share of physical activity including climbing and I spend way too much time gushing about the latest tech breakthroughs. Tech is not the solution, yet we must celebrate the achievements of our time and push for more!