Software is very interesting, it’s amazing how little things make a huge difference, being able to see all the small intricacies and how the pieces fit together is a complex and fascinating task. The more we understand, the more we learn effectively, better we can do it. Software complexity…

XP (Extreme Programming) leaders popularized CI (Continous Integration) in the late 90s. The idea was very simple, to continuously integrate code in a common branch usually called trunk, nowadays we call it main. The principles behind CI were (A) Reduce feedback cycles (B) Increase response time and release software faster…

Last month I was blogging about how code review is dead. Today I want to share some principles and practices to make things better. In the previous post I shared some actions, now let’s understand the principles behind many of these actions. First of all, can we save code reviews…

How we work matters, a lot. Unfortunately, very often engineers and managers don’t care about engineering working practices, which is a big mistake. How we work is the key to heaven or the highway to hell. Code review is a pretty default practice, it’s everywhere, companies do code review, at…

I was always a big believer in metadata and observability. Tagging is another form of observability, the idea is very basic and yet not well explored in our industry. You add metadata to a resource. Metadata is just data that describes data. Why bother? Well, at scale, there will be…

Once upon a time, Design Patterns was a big thing. In current times, perceptions have shifted and the industry has mixed feelings about them. I’ve thought a lot of blogging about design patterns was worth it or not. I used a lot of patterns in my life, there were moments…

Every single activity we do in engineering is an opportunity. We need to see this way, with positivity, and do more than we are asked to. That’s how we improve. PRO players from football, basketball, or any pro sports, practice like there is no tomorrow. Practice or training is one…

Testing is essential. Testing requires diversity, from integration to chaos, from your local machine to production. Writing tests not always is fun because sometimes is hard to write tests because not all contracts are good, and clean and went through a lot of thought processes. Is easy to blame the…

Complexity is everywhere. Small, medium, or big company, does not matter, no one can escape complexity. Complexity just tends to get bigger, we depend on software more and more. Ask yourself, if your subscriptions on iPhone are increasing or decreasing in the last 5 years. There is more competition, and…