CODEX

As the world still finds itself affected by the pandemic, a lot of developers are probably still working from home either entirely or at least most of the time.

And if you’re a developer and also an introvert, which is a quite common scenario, this should make your work easier…you know, until you have to be part of a useless meeting where everyone plays charades or wastes time talking about their favorite coffee or whatever (I was literally part of a daily…daily…meeting called “Let’s have a coffee” where everyone sorta joined and…did nothing? Just chatted?).

Does that scenario ring true…

See the picture above? That’s the type of colorful view on things I didn’t have until this year. This might seem weird, given the fact that 2020 was…less than ideal.

Let’s take a trip down an almost 8-year long path that leads me back to what I always wanted to do, even though I didn’t really know it consciously for a long time.

So, let the story begin…

If you’ve ever worked in a tech company, the following words might be true to your experiences. If you haven’t worked in a tech company and wonder what your average programmer does with his time at work, here’s a satirical view of a sprint. A sprint is a defined period of time of work, with a usual length of two weeks (though in reality, that length is anything between 1 week and 2 months).

A sprint usually starts on Monday, with what is known as a sprint planning meeting, where a team decides what they will be working on in…

I remember reading or hearing a story a while back about the problem with too many choices.

There was a company that created a drink consisting of vegetables and fruit. Everyone loved the drink, for various reasons. Some loved it because it tasted good, some loved it because it would get their mothers off their back with the whole “eat your vegetables” thing.

Everyone knew what the drink was about and what the company was about and their sales were steady.

Then, something changed.

Management decided to expand their range of drinks and started including flavors that derailed from the…

Where I come from, there’s a bit of a consensus in HR that it’s hard to convince software developers to change jobs. You either have to pay up (which, honestly, should be the case for every job — not just software engineers) or you must hope the developer you’re reaching out to is so fed up with their current situation that they will want to move on.

I have a different theory: A big reason for developers not wanting to change jobs is the coding interview. It is so broken that it could write its own melodramatic song. …

Music has been in my life for as long as I can remember. It’s either 1994 or 1995 when I first started taking piano lessons in this weird building with very old-school elevators.

When I told everyone that I’d be pursuing a full-time music career in 2021, the responses generally were good. I mean sure, there are probably some that question my, y’know, sanity and stuff, but at least on the surface level, everyone was like: “I mean, sure, as long as you have some form of reserves to help you get going”.

And given the perception around here about…

So I saw this meme I can’t find now that went something like this:

People: 2021 starts tomorrow

Me: I haven’t even processed 2016 yet

And yeah, I laughed a bit, I’m not going to lie. I mean, who hasn’t processed something that has happened like 5 years ago, right?

But then, my brain decided to be like: “yo, want to go over what has happened in your life in the last 4 years so you can be left stunned enough to write this article?”. …

It’s been 7 and a half years since I first encountered the now dreaded term Agile. Well, not really dreaded, just…frowned upon a lot. And I dare say it’s not without good reason.

Agile started off like a really cool thing. A way in which developers can actually create code that mattered without having to redo everything on launch day? Sign me up…oh but how wrong we were.

You want to know when I first started absolutely despising this process and how it’s implemented? 2 months into my first job. No more, no less. Here I was, fresh out of…