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6 Career Ratholes to Avoid in Software Engineering
Reading Time: 6 minutesThere are virtually infinite paths you can take to have a successful and fulfilling career in the software industry. Then again, many roads can lead to long-term issues and career ratholes.
The world of tech forgives compared to other fields. Just think of the areas of law, medicine, and politics for example, where a weak reputation can follow you around and be a disaster hard to recover from. In tech, you might not risk being blackballed from the industry or losing a professional license. However, you can still waste years of growth by getting stuck in the wrong place or walking the wrong path. ...
7 Strategies to Avoid Software Growth Zero, AKA Drowning in Maintenance
Reading Time: 8 minutesThe Software Garden
Software is like a garden. Both software and gardens require a lot of work, craftsmanship, and artistry to envision and create, especially when starting from scratch. They both evolve, and they both need constant maintenance, even if you don’t make any significant improvement.
If you are a reader of my blog, you know that I use a character called Bolbo as my mental framework for the quintessentialsoftware developer. You might remember that he has a square jaw, messy black hair, round glasses, a cynical sense of humor and a snarky attitude. I wrote about him in “A day in the life of a software engineer.” In this post, I will talk to you about Bolbo’s brother Polbo, who is a gardener. I will tell you about his journey in the creation of a formal garden. ...
How to Lead Change, a Primer
Reading Time: 8 minutesOn Change
Leo Tolstoy famously said, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” Tolstoy’s words are true today as much as they were true in his time. Life in the 1800s was very different, but people were not.
Today’s tech industry, populated by smart people pushing hard to innovate one line of code at the time, is no exception. Intelligence comes with strong opinions and personalities. If you’ve worked in teams for a while, at some point, you probably wished that somebody could be more pleasant or reasonable. ...
Doodle Tuesday: Spiral of Cornucopias
Reading Time: 1 minuteSince many of my readers asked for it, this Tuesday’s piece is another variation of the Cornucopia “doodle,” and it is going to be the last of the series. I generated it using a variation of my Cornucopia Art processing code. I hope you like it
Starting next Tuesday, I’ll probably resume my usual paper and ink scribbles, or perhaps I’ll start publishing some of my photography. What do you think? Please, let me know in the comments.
What’s next?
During the past couple of weeks, I have been super-busy organizing and leading a Software Architecture Summit. The Summit is over, it was great, but writing time was limited. The good news is that I have a ton of exciting topics to discuss, and can’t wait to get back on my usual writing schedule. ...
Doodle Tuesday: Ball of Cornucopias
Reading Time: 1 minuteLast week I published the results of doodles generated by code. This week I am presenting a variation on the same theme; the following image was generated using a variant of my Cornucopia Art processing sketch.
10 Top Reasons To Have a Career in Tech
Reading Time: 8 minutesIf you’re exploring new professional opportunities, a career in tech may have caught your attention as a potential avenue. Even if you already have one, you might have reached a point where you wonder if it was the right decision.
Having been in the software industry for 30+ years, I firmly believe that a career in tech, and especially programming and software engineering, is not only accessible to everyone, but it also represents a brilliant path to take in life. I am going to give you my top 10 reasons for this sentiment. ...
Generating Art With Code: Doodling, Math and Cornucopias
Reading Time: 4 minutesI have a compulsive need to create art; I also have a lifelong love for coding. The two passions are compatible and interrelated. Coding and Math can generate artistic visions. In this post, I show how I created a program to draw doodles formed by tangles of “Cornucopias” swimming in space.
Doodling for Life
If you are a reader of my blog, you know that every Tuesday I publish a hand-drawn meeting doodle from my Moleskine. Recently I have been doodling an interesting shape that, for some reason, I enjoy looking at. I call it a cornucopia because it resembles an elongated and twisted goat horn. You can see an example here. ...
Doodle Tuesday: Wraps
Reading Time: 1 minuteI am taking some time off during the holidays. My post schedule is going to be highly unusual. It will all go back to normal after January 8th.
I worked on today’s Doodle Tuesday during a few data-centric meetings where I was discussing Big Data solutions and the use of specific metrics. My mind was preoccupied with the idea of core data, meta-data and how to store both as layers of the same concept. If you observe it, you might see this preoccupation reflected in the doodle.
Visualizing Company Culture And Cultural Change
Reading Time: 10 minutesCompany culture is an important parameter in the success of a business, especially in the tech space. It represents the environment and character where employees generate ideas and produce value. It is the personality of a company and it regulates the heartbeat of a functioning organization.
Despite our desire to be in control of our environment, we are often unable to do so. Many things occur naturally, pushed by forces governed by the result of a myriad of factors that are too complex to study, understand and predict. ...
Doodle Tuesday: Tangle of Scrolls
Reading Time: 1 minuteMy doodles acquire archetypical shapes over time. Some forms recur, others morph into new ones and, sometimes, entirely new ones come out of nowhere, born from a primordial soup of thoughts and connections. Today’s Doodle Tuesday combines the archetype of a scroll – recurring in some of my older doodles – a cornucopia and a tangle of three-dimensional shapes. It also has some elements of objects giving birth to other forms, which is another recurring theme.
It was made with my faithful and on a . ...