Programming insights to Storytelling, it's all here.
At 6pm, I pack my laptop in my bag and walk in the long, silent, and empty corridors of the office. Since the pandemic started, I’ve been one of the few who often comes to the building. Right when I reach the exit, I realize that I have not turned off the lights. The light switch is inconveniently located in the middle of the office. So I say: “Alexa, turn off the lights.” At the distance, I see the circular blue light pulsating, then the lights go off. I leave for the day.
I once had a job interview for a backend position. Their stack was Node.js, MySQL, nothing exotic. The interviewer asked: "If you have an array containing a million entries, how would you sort the data by name?" My immediate thought was: If you have a JavaScript array with a million entries, you're certainly doing something wrong. The interviewer continued: "There are multiple fields that you should be able to sort by." This felt like a trick question. Surely the right answer was to explain why you shouldn't be sorting millions of records in JavaScript. Pagination, database indexing, server-side filtering. So I said exactly that.
We are obsessed with the future. We pepper experts with questions, desperate for a roadmap to what comes next. Is AI the future? Is RISC the future, is PHP the future... But here's a secret they won't tell you: they're all guessing. Well, almost all of them.
I've rented Apocalypto more times than I care to admit. Every time I placed it in Netflix's red envelope and mailed it back, my father would ask where the DVD was. A couple days later, it would arrive in the mail again, and like clockwork, I'd hear those jungle drums booming from his bedroom. He'd slip away during family movie nights, "just going to the kitchen" or "bathroom, don't pause it. I'll be right back." But we all knew where he was headed. That movie consumed him.
When I write a blog post, I usually look for an image that goes well with the article. My go-to website is Pixabay. It has a large collection of images, and I try to contribute my own whenever I can. What I like about Pixabay is that most, if not all, images are CC-0, meaning I can use them however I see fit. This year, the coworking space where I spend most of my day upgraded their internet service. In the email, they bragged that the new ISP uses state-of-the-art security. Great, but something seemed off to me. With the new ISP, I could no longer access Pixabay. The rest of the internet worked just fine, but not Pixabay. When I tested the website on my phone, it didn't load either. I turned off the wifi on my phone and tried again. Lo and behold! It worked.
Around 2012, I was walking through the Santa Monica promenade with some visiting friends. We did the tourist thing: looked at the performers, walked by the beach, and ate some delicious crepes. When the sun went down, we decided to go to the movie theater. Being well into my twenties, I was shocked when the clerk asked us to show our IDs before we could purchase tickets to what didn't look like a R-rated movie. The movie was Bernie. We presented our IDs by placing them against the thick glass while the clerk read each one with impressive speed and nodded at us.
When I click on a blog post these days, I'm not usually looking for the definitive encyclopedia entry or the slickest marketing brochure. Honestly? I'm hoping for something far simpler, yet increasingly rare. The sound of another human being figuring something out. I value both tutorials and personal experiences, but it seems like the latter is disappearing.
Back in the 90s, I discovered Yahoo. I'm not sure I remember how, but it became my internet homepage. The moment the dial-up internet connected, I would navigate to Yahoo and start my quick journey before someone picked up the phone line. Yahoo made sense to me. I knew how to find what I was looking for, though it required digging through page 2, page 3, or keep going until I found what I was looking for.
The middle manager ends up in this weird position. The company works on big projects and everyone has a hand in making sure the perfect result is released to the world. The VPs act as stakeholders, defining the high-level criteria (New widget that makes more money!). The architects design the infrastructure, the developers write the code, and QA tests to make sure it's up to spec. Sometimes, somewhere in the middle, there's a manager who can't easily show off his work. Sure, they "manage" the project, but in the end it's hard to look at a feature and say "This manager is responsible for it." Unlike developers who can point to a specific feature and say, 'I built this.'
"I'm sorry... did you want to go to the bathroom too?" "Oh no, I was just following you." "Oh, well I'd rather you not follow me." "Wait, it's not like you have something to hide, right? Make sure you don't leave the door closed."
One day I suddenly started feeling sick. My throat tightened, my nose ran, and my body burned. I thought it must be the flu. I took some time off from work. After a couple of days, I developed a cough, a cough that wouldn't stop. My kids were turning one, and my in-laws were here to visit. Not wanting to miss out on the opportunity, I started wearing a mask.
Most projects start with a burst of energy. Writing initial code, whether through vibe coding or meticulously setting up a new repository. This is the fast building phase: boilerplates are generated, frameworks are initialized, and thousands of lines of code appear almost magically. It's the era of rapid creation, where progress feels tangible, even exhilarating.
When I'm helping new developers, I often hear a familiar question: "Which is the best programming language?" They want a definitive answer, a shortcut to expertise. But I've learned that the question itself reveals a fundamental misunderstanding about how real opinions are formed.
I recently had to cancel my Internet service at home, and it was the worst experience I've ever had with customer service. A year ago, a new company that offers fiber internet was added to my neighborhood, so I decided to switch to the new service. I signed up online, entering all my information, including my credit card, only to find it wasn't available yet despite what their website claimed.
