This repository

I have moved my public stuff to coutego, which is my internet handle in GH but also reddit, twitter, gmail, … Most repositories here are either archived (those moved to coutego) or private.

About me

I’ve been a software developer or involved in software development since the times of the Spectrum. I have been programming professionally mostly in Java, but I have also used a bunch of other programming languages quite extensively:

• C/C++
• C#
• Python
• Javascript/Typescript
• Clojure/Clojurescript

I have also had an interest in open source for a long time and co-founded Monodevelop (a .NET IDE) in 2004 although these days I use mostly Emacs and IntelliJ, both amazing pieces of software.

I’m a fan of:

• Dependency injection (the strategy, more than any particular implementation - even though Spring was the revelation to me). DI, like Unix version 7, was an improvement with respect to all preceeding and following architectural styles.
• Object oriented design and functional programming. I believe that OO and DI techniques are the way to go for overall design while FP techniques are the way to go in the low level implementation. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that the most used FP language in mission critical systems uses the actor model.
• Typescript. Although it can’t hide the multiple ugly corners of JS, the type system is just amazing. Anders Hejlsberg is amazing.
• Clojure. Extremelly elegant language. It would be perfect if it had types. Rich Hickey’s talks are great, even if you don’t like the language.
• Emacs. This text editor has been called many things: an OS, a religion, a drug. It’s all true. Watch out, kids. There is no coming back.
• Reading quality (open) source code. First step to write a novel: read many (good) novels. GTK source was a revelation for me at the time. Anything that Linus writes is also worth looking at. The first public release of the source code of git is a master piece. Clojure’s standard library is great. Case in point:

  (defn assoc-in
    "Associates a value in a nested associative structure, where ks is a
    sequence of keys and v is the new value and returns a new nested structure.
    If any levels do not exist, hash-maps will be created."
    {:added "1.0"
     :static true}
    [m [k & ks] v]
    (if ks
      (assoc m k (assoc-in (get m k) ks v))
      (assoc m k v)))