My name is Alessandro. I recently completed a decade working as a backend developer, and passing this personal milestone has prompted me to reflect on what this time has meant for me in terms of the experiences I’ve had, the lessons I’ve learned, and the amazing professionals I’ve met. I want to create a space to share the things I’ve learned that can be useful to others. This blog is an attempt to do that.

I’m Italian, but I was raised in Brazil from a young age, which despite my lack of football skills, makes me a Brazilian at heart. In my previous life in Brazil, I was a martial artist and spent years training and teaching kids. I think that’s important because it set the tone for how I approach my professional life: learning through collaboration, sharing knowledge, being respectful, and helping others grow.

I’ve been living in Europe for about 15 years now, and for most of that time, I’ve been working as a backend developer. I’ve been an enthusiast of the Go programming language since its early days. Around that time, I also became interested in the DevOps culture when Docker was just starting to become popular. Since then, I’ve fully embraced the idea of infrastructure as code, developing, testing, deploying, and maintaining applications in a more efficient and reliable way. I believe this approach has helped me become a better developer by understanding the full lifecycle of the software I write and taking ownership of it.

I’ve worked on a variety of projects, from small startups to large corporations, and I’ve learned a lot from each of them. I’ve had the opportunity to develop small websites using PHP and build large distributed systems using Go. Regardless of the tools and languages, I’ve always tried to focus on the principles of software development and the craftsmanship of writing software that is simple yet elegant, pragmatic, readable, and maintainable, emphasizing clean code, design patterns, and SOLID principles. Finding ways of working that help my teams and myself to deliver value to our projects while bringing joy and satisfaction to the process is what I strive for.

Currently, I’ve decided to take a break from the corporate world, move to a small town by the sea in Crete, and focus on my personal projects, learning new things, and taking some time to reflect on what I want to do next. If you want to know more about me, see value in what I write, or want to collaborate, please feel free to reach out to me. I’m always happy to meet new people and find exciting projects to contribute to.

I’m just starting this blog, so it will take some time to put together content. But I hope you find something useful here, and I look forward to hearing from you.

whoami

Thus, my purpose here is not to teach the method that everyone should follow in order to properly conduct their reason, but only to show how I have tried to conduct my own. Those who take it upon themselves to give precepts must consider themselves more capable than those who receive them; and if they fail in the smallest thing, they are therefore censurable. But, proposing this writing to be merely a history, or if you prefer, a fable, in which, among some examples that may be imitated, perhaps others will be found that it would be right not to follow, I hope that it will be useful to someone, without being harmful to anyone, and that all will be grateful for my frankness. - René Descartes