Blogs

How do we learn?

It is said that a human brain has practically unlimited storage capacity, and yet I often feel a vacuum inside mine. I can almost see and touch that empty space, and I wish to fill it with useful, interesting information. The void bothers me because it feels like wasted space. Come to think about it, where are all of my hard-learned things? Why aren’t they there? Why is there so much empty space? Where are my bricks of knowledge?

The things that happen on the Internet

When you take your daily random walk down the Internet, chances are that you won’t see me. You have to look really, really hard, and even then: good luck. If you accidentally take the wrong turn, and end up in a place called “github” then, well, chances would be slightly higher, but still. That’s my “social network” where I follow exactly zero people, am followed by around thirty nameless folks, and it’s a large website, with a nerdy name, where no one talks to anyone if not for exchanging weird inhuman symbols that look like exactly what they are: stuff for computers.

A Year in Books: 2025

2025 was a satisfactory year, from a reader’s point of view. I ended it with 22 novels, of which one left unfinished. I found a little time also for three technical books, though I worked seriously through only one of them — hopefully this should change in 2026.

In the second part of the year I was captured by the Foundation’s saga, which was a revelation. I don’t think of myself as a sci-fi fan, yet this one truly absorbed me. The volumes are of the hefty side, which explains, at least in part, why 22 is the final figure.

Self hosting Ghost with Cloudflare

You know those articles that frequently appear around the internet with catchy titles like:

• AWS + Docker + Wordpress: Get rich in 5 minutes.
• GPC & Snowflake: How to build a successful blah blah blah.

I decided to make one. I’ll keep it brief though.

School of E is live

I have started School of E — Engineers from first principle — and because I mean it to be only content, but good content, the site is based on Ghost. Also, I simply had wanted to try Ghost out for a while.

I ReadIt

On my desk there’s a personal journal. One with pages made of actual paper.

A million apps for personal writing out there miss the point by a light year. First of all, handwriting feels nice because the specific physical act stimulates brain cells; in second place, you cannot riffle with your thumb a journal that is not made of actual paperpages. And, yes, riffling through pages feels good.

On my desk there’s also a pen, three actually but two are just pens and one is a Parker, a phone case, a storage pendrive (yes, that old thing), scattered pieces of paper and a notepad for todos. I mean an actual notepad with paper pages. That thing is there because another million apps for todos lists out there miss another key point: silence makes thinking, and planning, better, and computers are not silent, and I can almost hear right now the stupid ringtone of Outlook. On the cover of this notepad I scribbled “Stupid work”, just so I don’t forget what it’s for, and because, let’s be frank, work is stupid most of the time.

A Year in Books: 2024

This year was satisfactory from a reading point of view, tough it could have been even better. I ended up with 25 novels, 3 technical books (one of them intentionally unfinished) and 4 short stories.

Towards the end of the year I got busier than I anticipated, and that slowed things down. I was reading Babel at the time, and it was an unlucky coincidence, because that novel is quite a large one.

On analyzing running data

This is a short article that illustrates some things I discovered while working on Garmin’s workout data.

My readers know that I am working on an application that computes what I feel is missing in the Garmin Connect app, and what I think shouldn’t be a paid feature in other apps. For instance, distance covered in each HR zone. Or post-workout manual interval analysis. Or the percentiles of all metrics.

Make the most out of your MOOC

Note to readers. I originally wrote this article on Medium, on January 19, 2020. It was my first on that platform, and was well received and published in their largest publication. But I soon grew disappointed in Medium, and thus decided to move it here and delete my account over there.

Have you ever been disappointed with a MOOC?

I have been, more than once, even with very high-quality courses.

Useful patterns: Observer

Programming patterns are concepts that make code development more of a science, and less than a guessing game.

At times, it is nice to invent how the internals of a program behave. It feels fresh. Other times, though, it feels like a guessing game. A game that in most cases the developer is doomed to lose, because it’s simply too difficult to foresee the infinite ways a program will evolve.

API design and OOP

The words “Object Oriented” and I met for the first time when I was twenty. In the faculty where I got my software engineering degree, Object Oriented Programming (OOP) was awarded an entire semester-long class. It was presented to us, students, as a miraculous panacea for the correct practice of writing software. I liked the ideas back then, and don’t dislike them today. OOP theory, today, is more controversial: A lot of people think it’s not that great, after all.

Writing again

I am writing again. The difference is that this time I am serious about it.

What

I am developing a short story of fiction. I have completed what I refer to as “Version 1”—many more are coming. The sub-genre is realistic fiction and, needless to say, is inspired to true life. None of the characters is inspired by somebody I know, and the location isn’t either—it’s also unspecified in the story. The feelings and the events, however, are things that I have seen, or heard. Not word-by-word, of course, and that couldn’t have been otherwise, for the characters are totally made up, but I, somehow, know that the plot has happened, somewhere.

A Year in Books: 2023

From a reading perspective, 2023 was a disappointing year. I got sidetracked by a few other things, and also got stuck in some less-than-enjoyable reads. In the end, and from a “volume” point of view, it was unsatisfying. In two workds: too few.

Towards the end of it – say, the last quarter – I got back on track and enjoyed a few good books. The last book of the year, On Writing by S. King – in fact, its memoir – underlined a few important things. First of all, to stay within just the 50% of a pro like S.K., I need to read about 35 books in a year. Thc total count of the year just past was 17, of which 2 were technical books. In conclusion: I am far away from it.

A Year in Books: 2022

The year just past was dense of interesting readings. Below is the full list, with comments taken moments after I had finished each book.

The total year count was 20. Of these, four were technical books and sixteen were about subjects such as history, economics, sport and fiction.

One of the four technical books is still incomplete (Building secure and reliable systems). The reason is that this is more of a reference book and I am reading chapters in sparse order, whenever one of them seems related to other things I am working on.

Three Hours

The chill feeling of the morning breeze went away as I found myself surrounded by more people than I have ever been.

I was upset. The crowds, clearly less prepared than me, are going to make me lose precious time – so I thought. I was wrong, but I didn’t know yet.

That explains the first, fast 25 minutes. Too fast, in hindsight. At the start, I literally sprinted and made my way through the people with my legs as well as my elbows. Next to me, an African guy with giant calves was doing the same and I tried to stay right behind him.

A Year in Books: 2021

This is the list of books I read during the 2021 calendar year. Overall, I read 21 books from start to finish. Among these, 5 were technical books (about engineering, mathematics, statistics, or computer science). I often read two books at the same time, one technical and one not. This may change in 2022.

Immediately after finishing a book, I wrote down my notes, comments and general review of the book. These notes are reported here, unedited except for grammatical errors.

Writing Experiment I

This piece is a writing experiment. I wanted to review two books that I recently read (Make it stick and Drive), and I decided to do so in a novel way. After about one month, I looked back at every note that I took while reading the books, usually a sentence or paragraph highlighted, and jotted down my own thoughts that originated from that paragraph.

Here they are.

…

A danger that driven and self-motivated people must be wary of is that of having a pessimistic view on other people—I am often guilty of it. The dangerous thought is never “Others cannot do it”, because I know that if I can then everybody else can too. Difficulty is not the majority’s problem. Motivation is.

Back to Tech

After several years spent building technology at the bottom of the stack (microcontrollers, assembly programs, distributed optimization algorithms), I have now been in the application space for a decade. I am kind of bored.

App Hype

Building an app is a very fun process. It’s fast-paced, intriguing and goal-driven. Three great qualities deeply rooted in today’s businesses.

The first app I built was a Django app. Django is a web framework, which means it provides tools off-the-shelf to develop a web application, and it is developed on top of the Python programming language. So, my first app was a web app, which I believe holds true for the vast majority of app builders.

Gone

A friend and mentor passed away tragically this week.

I had the privilege to meet him, and speak with him very often throughout the past 3 years and a half. He was a warming, funny, brilliant and intellectual man. I can’t express in wordings how lucky I have been to meet him, and I will always remember him.

On such events people’s reactions are grief, sadness, anger even. Mine is incredulity: it sounds like a bad joke. I am waiting for his usual message: “Hi, do you have time to catch up?”. For sure, I was nowhere near him like his family, shttp://localhost:1313/ o please bear with me if it seems that I am too involved in this. Mine is a different type of pain, and I’ll do my best to describe it in a respectful way in the next lines.

Book Review: The Coaching Habit

At times, a book falls in your hands as if it was no coincidence.

This is pretty much what happened to me with The Coaching Habit (M.B. Stanier). Great book, for the records.

As it happened, I have been thinking a lot recently about management, business direction, and what motivates people at work. Then, on one of the last days of 2020, I received a note about this book in the newsletter sent by the instructors of the MOOC Learning to Learn. They gave very favorable reviews of it.

The Hamster-Writer Loop

Writing is like engineering my thoughts.

Every idea that comes from a sharp mind can be expanded into a full essay. If you simply start with a single, short sentence and then elaborate the thoughts within and beyond it, like engineering them, the essay will be there in front of your eyes.

At first, it will feel as if the sentence is crystal clear. Nothing to add. Well, give it another chance, and if you still have the same feeling then just stare at it a bit longer. Criticize it. What’s right with it, and what’s wrong?

The Easy Story

Every day is yet another day I am impressed by the amount of talking, reading and writing made about waking up early.

Frankly, it seems to come mostly from average writers trying to make catchy titles: How I changed my life waking up at 5 am.

I’ve woken up at 6 am five days a week for many years. Sometimes six days out of seven. And not because of some principle or propaganda. It just feels like a good time to wake up, taking into account what I like to do during the day. And I wouldn’t say it changed my life, really not at all.

My Freelancer Journey

I was 23 when I heard the word freelancer the first time. I became fascinated with it, and in the following three years I devoted a great deal of energy and passion towards becoming a freelancer.

I believe I was able to hit some pretty good milestones, but I also hit some very hard walls along the way. I want now to describe in detail the actions I took from the day I decided to become a freelancer, till the day I stopped. The motivation to retrace my steps is twofold. For myself: as always with writing, putting abstract thoughts in written words improves the understanding of my own mistakes. For others: if you want to pursue a career as a freelancer, and if there’s any patterns in my actions, or reproducible steps in my decisions, then you will find it here.

Mindshift

Changes in life, sometimes, they just happen.

Why do they more often happen to some people? What traits have these people in common?

For the changes I am talking about, there is one big trait in common: these people are smart.

What is wrong with smart people, why aren’t they ever satisfied? Why do they need changes?

To be sure, being content is a great personal quality to have. It brings the mind into a good emotional state, where enjoying the present comes natural. It does matter a lot.

Useful MOOCs

I found MOOCs very useful throughout my career. But I didn’t use them to land new jobs, not in a direct way.

It’s more about the power they give me to communicate with people about new and interesting subjects. They are useful because they enable high level conversations between people with interesting ideas.

Why?

I believe in education. I believe that education matters a lot in life, and that it can change the world, whereas money can’t (though it can be used to foster education).

Mentor

Note: I am not a mentor!

What are the three worst difficulties I have in my career right now? How could it be easier? Who has already solved them?

I have never had a mentor, officially. When I look back at my journey as a freelancer I can’t help but think that went really well. I went from registering a new account on UpWork to CTO in the Bay Area in 3 years and half.

Why Education Matters to Freelancers

I thought that highly educated professionals had a hard time finding freelance work. I was wrong. Years later, I have a story to prove it.

What is it that makes an overqualified freelancer appetible to business? What makes entrepreneurs willing to pay the higher rates of freelancers who are PhD, Dr. and more?

If I were to start all over again, what things would I do again because they were proven right, and what mistakes would I want to avoid?