A visual guide to React Mental models, part 2: useState, useEffect and lifecycles
I love mental models. They’re crucial to understanding complex systems, allowing us to intuitively grasp and solve complex problems. This is…
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A visual guide to React Mental models
I’ve learned that the biggest difference between someone that has mastered a language, framework or tool and someone who hasn’t lies in the…
How to improve your team’s communication in the age of remote work
I wrote this originally as a guest-article in Smashing Magazine. Remote work is taking over the world, and the biggest obstacle remote teams…
Notes (and quotes) on being good at negotiating - Never Split The difference
We’re constantly negotiating whether we want to or not. From mundane things like agreeing what to have for dinner, to important decisions…
How I fixed my chronic pain by changing my developer habits
As developer’s we have a few proverbial health issues: wrists pain from typing so much, being exhausted from sitting all day, alongside back…
Your job is to learn, not to teach
Chances are you’ve been part of an internet argument. The rules are simple: try to win without insults. Having a civilized discussion is…
Fix Figma not working on Brave browser with black screen
If your Figma is not working on your Brave browser, or Figma showing a black screen where the designs should be, you can easily fix it by…
Circe - A delightful reminder of our mortality
Books transcend beyond their covers by making us hallucinate with wonders, and a good author is like a wizard cooking up potions that will…
How Video games Destroy my focus and long-term thinking
For my 5th birthday, my auntie gave me a Super Nintendo SNES with Mario Brothers on it. I’ve been in love with video games ever since, and I…
Why these notes exist
Hello there. This article is an attempt at explaining, to you as much as to myself, why these Notes exist separate from Articles. Why do I…
Migrating 5 years of WordPress to Gatsby
Back in 2014, I had the incredible idea of starting a blog. At the time I never imagined I’d write over 130 articles in 5 years. My blog has…
That feeling you get when someone closely teaches you something
My daughter loves coloring. She draws and colors on any paper she can get her hands on, from clean white pages screaming to be filled with…
The most enjoyable thing I currently own: The Nintendo Switch.
For my 6th birthday, my mom gave me an Optimus Prime robot that walked and made sounds. It was such an amazing present and I was so…
On Meditation and Best quotes from "10% Happier" by Dan Harris
I’ve been meditating on-and-off for a couple of years but I have never been able to make it stick. My longest streak was while using…
My first week at a remote-first company
I’ve wanted to work remotely for years. Being able to control my time, productivity and work habits seemed like a dream. Not to mention the…
I'm Not Good Enough
The vast majority of my recent articles have been focused on books. What books I read, my thoughts on topics I read on them, reviews from…
The Age Of Artifical Intelligence: the future of jobs, algorithms and morality.
You might have heard of The Three Laws of Robotics, they were laws proposed by Isaac Asimov on his famous book “I, Robot”. Such laws would…
Hiding your hero in plain sight: Duncan Idaho and the genius of Frank Herbert's Dune
Frank Herbert is considered by many to be one of the best science fiction writers of all time. He wrote the classic, astounding and eye…
How to create powerful habits that breed success: a review of Atomic Habits.
James Clear is a fantastic writer with a great blog. He writes about self-development with a twist. Instead of talking about philosophy and…
Best quotes from "Atomic Habits" by James Clear
I loved this book, it offers a fantastic, usable framework to create new habits and to change old ones. You can find my in-depth review of…
Best quotes from "21 lessons for the 21st century" by Yuval Noah Harari
Anyone you talk to will readily admit that the world it’s facing many challenges. Each society needs to deal with its own issues, but we…
The joy of coding: why I love being a programmer.
I read a book on the history of early programmers, the ones that came to be known as “hackers” and that lay the foundation for modern…
Isaac Asimov, The Quintessential Writer.
I discovered Asimov when I was about fourteen. I loved that we both shared a name, Isaac and that he pioneered the idea of robots and the…
On Distractions, Ideas, Richard Feynman and having a great life.
In 2016 I stumbled upon a book called “The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out” by Richard Feynman, it was a collection of some of Feynman’s best…
Opinion: Students Learn From People They Love
I stumbled upon an article from The New York Times titled “Students Learn From People They Love”. It instantly caught my attention because…
My Top 5 Books of 2018. With Short Reviews and Highlights.
Reading books it’s generally considered an honorable thing to do with your time. Everyone agrees that reading books it’s good, even though…
I had 39 fully written but unpublished blog posts. So I wrote another one!
So many things that came pouring out of my fingers to never see the light of day. To forever leave my mind, for I have no recollection of…
When Time became our God, and anxiety our companion.
The time is so scarce, it is somewhat frustrating. To let go of things you love, just to make some space for the things you might have a…
How to find meaning and happiness in our lives.
We draw meaning from anything we can find. Our titles, our possessions, our friends, our past and our possible future are all bragging…
How do you gain knowledge? And how do we avoid losing it?
What do you think of if I ask you about the Middle Ages? I imagine most people as farmers. Images of kings, crusades, The Plague and utter…
On Movies vs Books and Emotionally Rewarding Activities.
Imagine you’re watching a fantastic movie. One of your favorites or one you’ve never seen before; imagine that surge of expectation, the…
Fahrenheit 451, a review and highlights.
I’ve mentioned in the past how I tend to choose books. If they ring a bell, like Montaigne’s essays, then I assume they’re good books since…
On world building, Twenty One Pilot's Trench, and creativity.
I’ve been listening to this one album for more than a month now. I usually listen to music while coding, and whenever I want to play music I…
My nonna and her stories.
My family, just like any other family out there, has some interesting history and things worth talking about and stories worth telling. I…
The casual, exacerbating philosophy of Montaigne - A review
The way I choose my books a lot of the time is the same as I and many others choose things. If the books sound familiar, it means I heard…
The last of Dune. Thoughts on "Chapterhouse" and the journey of reading Dune.
I started reading Dune mid-2016, and among the 50 or so books I read that year, Dune was the best one of them. A marvellous book, a…
Thinking Fast and Slow. Understanding Human Behavior. A Review.
Reviewing books as complex and important as this one is hard. It took me almost 5 months to get through this book. I read about 10 other…
The value of friendship.
As I sit alone my mind starts to think back to my past. Back to people that were once cornerstones of my life. Not just friends that shared…
On Greatness And The Fear Of Tomorrow.
I believe humans have a tendency to fear the future, to stay away from the thought of what’s to come, the possibilities of it. They’re…
Tap. Tap. Tap. – Poem
I sit alone on the couch. Holding more computer power that ever thought possible. Hugging bits and bytes. Pixels and pretty animations…
Wait, I'm an adult now. When did that happen?
You’re walking down the street or driving your car, or going back to work from a cigarette break when suddenly it hits you: you’re an adult…
Playing with toy scissors
My daughter came to me with plastic toy scissors and started to play with them, as I’m sitting down on the sofa in front of her she takes…
A thank you note to the universe.
There are studies, and a hell of a lot of self-help books that make emphasis on how being grateful will improve your happiness, health and…
Review: Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead
My thoughts on: Work Rules! By Laszlo Bock. And a bit about the Google Memo craziness at the end. I always give tags to the books I read…
Poem: The Shape Of Us.
As the wind that washes the shore Corroding the tallest mountains As it whistles songs of love That the trained ear can hear Do we also…
On Becoming A Man.
I was watching a movie the other day called “20th Century Women”. In it, a couple of women try to teach a 15 y/o boy how to *become* a man…
On Good Stories, Good Endings and Isaac Asimov.
Jeff Goins in his book “You are a Writer” explains that, regardless of how much you write and how good you are at it, you *are* a writer as…
A lonely wolf
“You don’t realize how lonely you are, until the person that scares away the loneliness is gone”, he said to himself. “I should post on…
Poem: Loved. Unknown. Lonely. Mistaken.
She dies a little when he says sorry. So that’s it? Another apology? Is that all you’ve got for me today? He doesn’t know any better. The…
Poem: Ourselves.
When there is time, we think When the rush of everyday life leaves us Then when we can afford to look into ourselves To understand who we…