Alejandro's Eclectic Newsletter
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EN 82: "Books about the current reality"
May 3, 2025
These past weeks, I’ve been reading books related to our current reality. Having a library near me helps and, luckily, most books I want to read are...
EN 81: "Salsa thoughts"
April 26, 2025
I’m the type of person that gets hooked into a topic or skill and wants to go deeper. Some people might say I get too focused or obsessed, a healthy kind of...
EN 80: "Reaching Vim 'proficiency'"
April 5, 2025
Since issues 44 and 72, which were sent in February and November 2024 respectively, there has been no mentioned of Vim again and this is a good a time as...
EN 79: "Studying for fun"
March 28, 2025
This will be a short one this week, followed by a longer list of links and articles. The past two weeks I finally came back to a study routine of sorts. Not...
EN 78: "Spring's here"
March 15, 2025
Happy spring! This time of the year is one of the bests in London. After the dark, cold and rainy end of the year, we get some beautiful respite. As you can...
EN 77: "In search of truth (I)"
March 1, 2025
After a rather long hiatus and working from Spain, I’m back in London. I had a couple of conversations that, together with the state of the world, left me...
EN 76: "Pairing with Claude"
January 19, 2025
Using LLMs while building a tiny programming language to enhance an internal tool
EN 75: "Dealing with pain"
January 11, 2025
My experience with chronic pain and a lower back pain injury to start the year.
EN 74: "Ergonomics, movement and better posture"
December 21, 2024
When I was a kid, I could sit down for hours on end playing video games. Nowadays, sitting for an hour makes me uncomfortable, my neck starts to hurt, or my...
EN 73: "Maslow's hierarchy of uncomfortable learning"
November 22, 2024
For the past two weeks, I’ve been working mostly with Python codebases. On top of just the language, add to that things like pandas and Apache Spark for data...
EN 72: "Vim body mind connection"
November 13, 2024
Learning Vim is like any other skill. It takes time to build up the reps and integrate it. I’m working on it, slowly, and have managed to use it daily at...
EN 71: Raising the bar or raising the floor? (spin-off)
November 4, 2024
An ethereal screen pops up before your very eyes. This is odd, you mutter, but there’s not even a trace of surprise in your body, it feels natural, welcoming...
EN 70: Raising the bar or raising the floor?
November 1, 2024
“Raising the bar” is a tricky phrase. What does it mean to the person saying it? I immediately get a visceral reaction, while the context associated with it...
EN 69: Dotfiles, Nix and not being techie enough
October 18, 2024
Last week, a colleague of mine showed me his dotfiles repo. The idea is to version control your many config files for things like vim, git, shell aliases,...
EN 68: October update
October 9, 2024
After a few more weeks than originally planned, I’m back. Starting a new job is always somewhat chaotic, and it’s taken me a full month to come back to a...
EN 67: Creating a company seems daunting
August 16, 2024
On random days like today, I find myself thinking about the many dysfunctional or unethical companies in the world, and how different—better—things could be....
EN 66: Summer break and good news
August 2, 2024
It’s that time of the year when fans are sold out and the national sport of complaining about the weather gets to peak levels, we’re ready for the gold...
EN 65: Reflections on remote vs in office work and priorities
July 26, 2024
I have been considering my priorities about remote or in office work. On one hand, it’s good to see that, at least, hybrid is the default, with various...
EN 64: Are you having fun?
July 19, 2024
I’ve been doing a few interviews here and there. To spice things up, I’ve been asking something along the lines of: “how fun is it to work here?” Granted,...
EN 63: New opportunities and AC/DC
July 12, 2024
Hey there! After almost a year in my current role, I’m now looking for new opportunities. Based on the market right now, while there’s the chance of finding...
EN 62: A peculiar week
July 5, 2024
It’s been a peculiar week, with things to process and changes. What it was going to be a slightly anti-Cucumber post—not the vegetable—with a mix of...
EN 61: Testing and confidence in the front-end (II)
June 20, 2024
Confidence Confidence in our code is paramount, I don’t mean it in the narrow sense of just looking at the code and thinking that’s good, or writing a simple...
EN 60: Testing and confidence in the front-end (I)
June 14, 2024
Confidence in the code and systems is one of the most important aspects in a software team, but often underestimated or set aside for more “valuable...
EN 59: Showcase performance
June 5, 2024
One of the ideas that quickly comes up is the idea of showcasing what the team’s been working on the past few weeks at regular intervals. From my experience,...
EN 58: Solution focused
May 31, 2024
Refusing to be curious
EN 57: Blocking apps experiment
May 17, 2024
Quick update this week. Still learning Rust and it’s been fun. I’m already halfway through the two books, filling in flash cards in the process. In Hands-on...
EN 56: Learning at work should be a thing
May 10, 2024
Not everybody can spare a few hours a day of their own time to get better at their craft, nor should they be expected to. Kids and family, responsibilities,...
EN 55: Learning and dealing with distractions
May 3, 2024
Since last week, I’ve been putting more focus on consistently carving time to learn. One of the challenges was—and still is—reducing mindless distractions...
EN 54: Back to basics of the craft
April 26, 2024
At the core, I’m a software developer. No matter how much I learn about system thinking, product, design or any other area, at the end of the day, I still...
EN 53: If I were an Agile Coach
April 17, 2024
If I were an Agile Coach, or rather, somebody whose job is to bring or improve ways of working or the way the company operates, there would not be a mention...
EN 52: Collaboration is not a one-off thing
April 12, 2024
Once in a blue moon or maybe a few times a year, there’s the strategy retreat, the company-wide event, the collaboration day or the cross-functional...
EN 51: Band together, don't wait for approval to start
April 5, 2024
Recently, a developer was telling me that the system was unreliable, and that bugs were always appearing in production after every feature. On top of that,...
EN 50: A list of energising stuff
March 23, 2024
A few days after finishing last week’s newsletter on energising work and collaboration, I started to look back at moments in my career when I felt energised...
EN 49: Energising work and collaboration
March 22, 2024
I didn’t pay attention when it stopped happening. It is what it is, I thought, but when it occurred, the feeling was like a drug, a rush of energy and...
EN 48: Brief thoughts on AI
March 8, 2024
Hey! This week’s newsletter is severely delayed, as you can see. While I’ve had some positive improvements, I’m still struggling with getting a stable...
EN 47: We need to make sure we don't forget
March 1, 2024
Could we remember to take a little time to review some code? The tickets have been accumulating in the review column for ages, but everyone’s working on...
EN 46: Reflections on Return to Office mandates
February 23, 2024
I’ve been wondering about how I’d feel if I had to come back to the office most of the time. Plenty of companies have been announcing Return to Office (RTO)...
EN 45: Routine, movement and toilet squats
February 16, 2024
After coming back to London, I’ve been trying to get used to the routine again, and it’s always somewhat challenging after some weeks of holidays of chaos....
EN 44: Valencia, Vim and a cold
February 2, 2024
Hey there! Today’s going to be a short one. I’ve been taking it easy this week, no studying or coding outside of work. I went to Valencia over the weekend,...
EN 43: How thinking about death affects my career
January 25, 2024
Lately, I've been thinking about death, not in a depressing way, but more as a way to reflect. For the longest time I feared it, and when I was a teenager...
EN 41: Reflecting on 2023
December 21, 2023
2023 is almost over. Time to reflect about the year and look to the future. Before I start, the newsletter will be on hiatus for the holidays, and it’ll come...
EN 42: We can't be heroes, not even for one day
December 21, 2023
The first newsletter of 2024 is here, and it’s written from Madrid, that’s a new one! Unfortunately, I’m not on holidays, on the beach, sunbathing with a...
EN 40: The pursuit of humane workplaces
December 13, 2023
The “Great Resignation” had people leaving their jobs in high numbers, creating staffing problems in the U.S.A.; with employees not wanting to go back to...
EN 39: Shifting complexity
December 7, 2023
Complexity is everywhere, can't escape it, we can only manage it
EN 38: Meta skills
November 28, 2023
If we want to improve, we have to think about how to improve, not only about what to improve.
EN 37: Career advancement and system thinking
November 20, 2023
Elizabeth Ayer: "That said, I remain skeptical that good nonlinear…" - MastodonThat said, I remain skeptical that good nonlinear thinking skills help your...
EN 36: How to learn better with proven techniques
November 16, 2023
Proven techniques to learn better, maximise retention and understand more, backed by cognitive psychology.
EN 35: Conventions are not dogma
November 8, 2023
The other day I saw a comment about a way to write some code that shocked me. It was about using uppercase and snake case with constants—LIKE_THIS. The style...
EN 33: Deploying on Fridays, is it crazy?
October 28, 2023
This week’s newsletter comes from the archives of my blog. It’s been a weird week, and couldn’t find the time to finish the article for this Friday—although...
EN 34: Walking on eggshells
October 25, 2023
You’re working on a new feature, a bug fix or on extending a piece of functionality. After identifying what needs to change, you go ahead and make the...
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