Blog

Building a Game in Two Days

What happens when you give an AI a quest and get out of the way

A casual Telegram message turned into a nine-level Lord of the Rings browser game. Every line of code written by an AI agent. Every creative decision made by a human who grew up on Middle-earth.

Idealism vs Pragmatism

Holding both ends of the rope

The tension between doing things right and getting things done shapes every decision in software and in life. TDD, pair programming, AI adoption: the best results come from holding both ends of the rope.

Build Your Own Team of Agents

From solo assistant to coordinated workforce

Stop using AI as a single assistant. Organize agents into specialized teams with roles, docs, and parallel execution for real leverage.

MCP: Giving Your AI Agent the Right Context

Why context is the real superpower

MCP connects AI agents to your dev tools, databases, and APIs through a standard protocol. Give your agent the context it actually needs.

How Bitcoin Works

Blockchain, cryptography, and consensus

Transactions, blocks, mining, the UTXO model, and Lightning Network -- how Bitcoin actually works under the hood, explained in plain terms.

Bitcoin Fundamentals

A beginner's guide to sound money

21 million cap, no central authority, permissionless and censorship-resistant. Bitcoin is digital money you truly own. No bank required.

AI Gives You Speed, Not Quality

The human factor in the age of vibe-coding

AI accelerates your output but doesn't ensure quality. You're responsible for every line you commit. Speed without direction is chaos.

What Success Means to Me

A simple definition that changed how I live

Success is waking up knowing that what you do makes the people around you, and yourself, happier. No complex formula. Just consistency over perfection, and building habits that align with what matters.

Ship, Show, Ask

Culture-Driven Collaboration at the speed of code

In fast-moving teams, one of the biggest tensions we face is this: How do we keep shipping without compromising quality or collaboration? The traditional approach to pull requests often slows things down. We wait hours—or days—for approvals, even for trivial changes. But the alternative—just merging directly—can feel reckless or invisible to the rest of the team. That's where the Ship-Show-Ask strategy comes in.

Run Your LN Node on a Raspberry Pi

Take full control of your Lightning payments with Alby Hub

In this guide, I'll show you how to set up a fully custodial Lightning Network (LN) node using Alby Hub on a Raspberry Pi, giving you complete control over your node. Alby Hub offers a DIY free version for a self-custodial Lightning wallet, ensuring full ownership of your funds while being 100% open-source.

Understanding Taxes

Where your money goes and how to rethink the system

Taxes are unavoidable. Whether it's your paycheck, morning coffee, or the house you just bought, taxes are everywhere. If you've ever wondered where your money goes after payday or why buying property comes with extra fees, this post is for you.

The Cypherpunks

Pioneers of privacy in the digital age

In the early '90s, with the internet on the rise, a group called the Cypherpunks emerged to defend digital privacy. They pushed for encryption and privacy tech, shaping our digital world with their vision and ideals.

Verified Git Commits

Boosting trust and security in your codebase

Sign your Git commits with GPG to prove they're really from you. Without signatures, anyone can fake commits using your email. It takes 5 minutes to set up and adds real trust to your codebase.

bashunit

Turning frustrations into tools for better development

bashunit is a lightweight, easy-to-use testing framework for Bash, packed with handy features like parallel and snapshot testing, test doubles, data providers, and tons of built-in assertions. Backed by clear docs and an active community, it's become a favorite for reliable Bash testing. What started as a simple dev frustration has grown into an open-source tool that makes testing in Bash a lot easier and fun.

People Skills

From code to collaboration

So, you're a software developer, and you've mastered coding languages, algorithms, and all the tech stuff. That's awesome! But here's the deal: technical skills alone won't get you as far as you might think. If you can't work well with others, it doesn't matter how great your code is — nobody will want to work with you.

What Is Waterfall?

What makes Waterfall a poor fit for modern software development?

Waterfall is like following a straight path where you move from one step to the next in a defined order — like water flowing down a waterfall through different stages. The problem is that each step can take a lot of time and resources to complete. Plus, you don't get feedback until the entire stage is finished, which can lead to a lot of wasted time. This is especially tricky in software development, where things are always changing and evolving.

Pretty Good Privacy

How PGP secures your digital communication

PGP is an encryption program that ensures privacy and authentication for data communication. It is used for signing, encrypting, and decrypting texts, emails, files, directories, and whole disk partitions, enhancing the security of email communications.

Programmable Money

The power of Bitcoin's Script

Bitcoin is often referred to as programmable money because it allows for the execution of programmable transactions through its scripting language, leveraging each bit for precision and functionality.

Prisoner's Dilemma

The dilemma of trust and self-interest

The Prisoner's Dilemma illustrates the complexities of strategic decision-making, where individuals must choose between cooperation and betrayal, often revealing insights into human behavior and the consequences of self-interest versus collective benefit.

What Kills Agility?

Why Agile if you already do Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, or Waterfall?

Why Agile, if you already do Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, or Waterfall? How we manage an organization defines its quality. Excellent management is crucial to avoid the Waterfall trap if we aim to build an Agile environment. But why would we want that? What's wrong with the way we already work?

Learning Concurrency in Golang

A horse racing emulator explained step by step

I wanted to learn a new programming language, so after trying some, I ended up with Golang as one of my favorites for its simplicity and capabilities. It has features I haven’t used in years, like multithreading and concurrency.

Effective Pair Programming

Embracing quality practices in your engineering culture

A practical guide to pair programming that works -- roles, rotation, when to pair, common pitfalls, and how to make sessions productive.

Deployments on Fridays

Why "should we not" deploy to production on Fridays?

I have heard multiple times, from various people, the idea of panic towards deploying on Fridays. How good is that idea of banning the day before weekend from delivering new value to our clients or customers?

Great Engineering

A great engineer is not just a great coder

Coding is not just another job. In the right environment, writing software can be really fun and, even more, it can be your personal hobby as well! So... you might be focused on coding, coding and more coding to level up your own career skills.

Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing

Tuckman's Model to drive a team to high performance

Embarking on the path to high team performance involves understanding Tuckman's Model — a roadmap through the stages of forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. In this blog post, we explore practical strategies for each stage, empowering leaders and team members to cultivate collaboration, manage conflicts, and achieve true synergy.

How to Test Private Methods?

Testing private methods. When and how?

From time to time I have had to face this question: how to test private methods? I have put together in an article the techniques that I usually use.

Unhealthy Working Environment

Recognizing red flags of an unhealthy workplace

An unhealthy working environment can have various symptoms that negatively impact both the physical and mental well-being of employees.

The Peter Principle

The rise to a level of incompetence

The Peter principle states that a person who is competent at their job will earn a promotion to a position that requires different skills. If the promoted person lacks the skills required for the new role, they will be incompetent at the new level, and will not be promoted again.

How Do You Get Everyone on Board?

How do you deal with people reluctant to change?

I was invited to the WeAreDevelopers World Congress to give a tech talk about my experience with Extreme Programming and the profound benefits of embracing change in your work and life.

Never Ending Loop

Writing to help myself sleep

It is hard sometimes to get to bed with the mind blank because, more often than not, I think about my next reading, learning, talk, or what I will write this or next month.

Learned Helplessness

An acceptance of powerlessness

Learned helplessness is the behavior exhibited by a subject after enduring repeated aversive beyond their control. It was initially thought to be caused by the subject's acceptance of their powerlessness by discontinuing attempts to escape or avoid the aversive stimulus.

Dedicated QA Teams in Software?

How does it fit a dedicated QA person in your agile team?

This will be controversial, but let's talk about the QA position. The hidden truth behind the lack of software quality and why this should concern you if you write software.

Introducing a New Tech Stack

How to introduce new technologies in your team

To introduce a new tech stack for the entire team, it's important to bring "why?" and a strategy to make it happen among the team because it will affect everyone.

Have You Always Been Like This?

How to find a balance of growth and happiness

Have you always been like this? Constantly reading books, writing blog posts, public speaker in conferences and meet-ups, learning in your private time, etc...? The short answer is: no, and let me tell you how I ended up in this situation.

Great Leadership

Leadership starts within your own life and behaviour

As organizations grow, leaders must shift focus from customers to employees. Key principles for scaling leadership effectively.

Interview About XP and Agile

Agile is about HOW you do certain things

My interview with devm.io regarding Agile and Extreme Programming. Agile is more about HOW you do certain things, rather than WHAT things you do.

Ignoring Scrum to Get More Agile?

Killing agility with excessive meetings

People become slaves to systems that are supposed to help. Boring meetings are killing agile. Meetings require active participation from everyone. Otherwise, you might not be essential to that meeting, and rather use your time with something else.

Working Agile with Non-Agile Teams

How can you work with other teams that aren't agile?

Let's assume you already know what the agile manifesto is. Let's consider that you apply most of the extreme programming values, principles, and practices. How can you work with other teams that aren't agile?

Different Beliefs About Software Quality

Some thoughts about software quality among your team

What to do when working on "bad software" and you can't improve it because it is against the beliefs of your peers? Should you change the company?

The Beauty of Leadership

Team Lead? Tech Lead? What is leadership and what is not?

Leadership is action, not a title. It has nothing to do with management or hierarchy. What it really means and how anyone can lead.

Understanding People

Misunderstandings, effective communication, and self-reflection

One of the most complicated challenges for everyone is avoiding misunderstandings and being aware that other people don't think the same way as you do.

The Project Management Triangle

The Iron Triangle

A triangle of time, quality and cost. it's an indicator that these three parameters are interconnected. You can fix one or two of them, but not three.

The Path to Seniority in Software

How to become a Senior Software Developer?

Real seniority goes beyond job titles. It's about impact, mentoring others, owning outcomes, and raising the bar for your entire team.

Bikeshedding

Also known as the Law of triviality

Bikeshedding explains why teams waste time on trivial decisions while ignoring complex, important ones. Learn to recognize and avoid it.

Dunbar Number

Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships.

Update Your Team to Be More Extreme

How can you help your peers to embrace the change?

Our profession is constantly evolving; therefore, it demands a non-stop learning process. Embracing the change is not optional in our software industry. We need to create spaces to get out of our comfort zone.

The Power of Authority and Obedience

Milgram's experiment

Milgram was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person, and how easily people could be influenced into committing atrocities. For example, Germans in WWII.

London vs Chicago

It's an integration, not a choice

There are two known schools in TDD: the mockist school (aka Outside-in) and the classicist school (aka Inside-out).

Red Work vs Blue Work

Managing the two kinds of work

Blue Work and Red Work are concepts that David Marquet describes in his book 'Leadership is Language. Both require different mindsets and both have different languages.

TDD vs BDD

Design or Workflow?

These are two different techniques. The key to each of them is about the mindset and context of what you want to achieve.

Test-Driven (Development)

What is challenging about it?

TDD is a design practice, not just a testing technique. Writing tests first changes how you think about code and shape its structure.

Responsibilities of a Tech Lead

It's not a promotion. It's a role change.

The Trident Career Model by Patrick Kua has three tracks. Each track represents where people spend most of their time or energy.

Conformity Experiments

The uncomfortable truth about human nature

To what extent do social forces alter people's opinions? Which aspect of the group influence is most important — the size of the majority, or the unanimity of opinion?

Open-Source Software

The power of contributing to OSS 🖥

A practical guide to open-source software: its benefits, how to start contributing, and why sharing code accelerates your career growth.

Pull Requests vs Pair Programming

Why choosing when you can have both?

Let's talk about the benefits of Pull Requests and Pair Programming, and my thoughts on these after some years of experience with them.

Embrace the Change

Who moved my cheese?🧀

The tale is a beautiful metaphor of the different attitudes that people adopt as part of their identity in life when they have to confront any change.

Phel: The Lisp That Compiles to PHP

A new functional language with full interoperability with PHP

The new Functional Programming language build-in for PHP.

To Mock or Not to Mock

How to escape the mocking hell

Mocking is useful, but 'what to mock' usually turns out to be a more complicated than expected if you don't treat this carefully.

Sharing Your Git Patches

Another way of sharing quick suggestions with your team

Discover another way of sharing suggestions with your development team.

Never Use array_merge in a Loop

The spread operator to the rescue

Using array_merge inside a loop is a performance killer. The spread operator will help you to improve this by flatting the array.

Typed Arrays in PHP

An alternative to the missing feature in PHP: Generics

Argument unpacking, function variable argument list, and variadics function.

The Process Itself Is the Goal

How to focus and have self-discipline

No goal should be an achievement on its own, but the process itself that helps us to go in the direction of these goals.

Testing Effectively Legacy Code

How to write proper tests to already written code

How to write characterization tests for legacy code to safely refactor without breaking existing behavior.

Strict Types in PHP

declare(strict_types=1);

Why declaring strict_types in PHP improves code readability and prevents silent type coercion bugs.

The Art of Refactoring

When, how, and why

If you see something, in the scope of your current task, that can be easily improved, improve it. And if you have any questions about it, ask.

Final Classes in PHP | Java | Any

Final, or not final, that's the question

Clear contracts, isolated side effects, testability, low complexity and cognitive load, code fluidity, and confidence in yourself.

The Art of Testing: Where Design Meets Quality

From a software developer's point of view

Why you should consider testing as part of your daily development habit and how it's directly linked to the software quality.

How to Improve Your Tech-Talk (or Any Other Presentation)

Some tips to improve your communication skills

We have found ourselves attending a meeting that felt like we were wasting our time with a monologue that is either hard to follow or doesn't seem so interesting as it could. Let's fix this.