5 reasons why you should start writing technical articles

5 reasons why you should start writing technical articles

A few weeks ago, LinkedIn has reminded me that it was four years ago (on ) when my first technical article, titled Create Your Own HTML5 Environmental Thermometer, went live. The article was published by SitePoint at a time where the editor was Tom Museth (still thank you for that!).

This anniversary has made me think about what writing technical articles has meant to me and what benefits it has provided to my career. In this article, I’ll share 5 reasons why you should start writing technical articles.

The power of simplicity in code

The power of simplicity in code

A few days ago I found an online test featuring six exercises on JavaScript. For fun, whishing to challenge myself with something tricky, I decided to take it. The test proved to be very simple, so it isn’t worth a discussion. It’s what happened next that inspired this article.

I was talking with a workmate about the test and he decided to take it despite my warning about its simplicity. We compared the solutions we wrote for two of the six exercises and we found out that they were quite different: his solutions were terse and clever, mine were long and extremely simple in their approach to the problem. These differences have generated an interesting discussion that touched several topics: readability, complexity, performance, and maintainability.

Starting from the analysis of the two exercises we compared and the solutions we wrote, in this article I’ll share my thoughts about the power of simplicity in code.

The revolution of 3-spaces code indentation

The revolution of 3-spaces code indentation

Almost 10 years have passed since that moment and I’ve changed my conventions quite a lot. But there is one thing that isn’t changed and I’m still firmly advocating: the use of 3 spaces to indent the code. Now, I know that some of you might have already labeled me as crazy, but when it comes to code conventions there isn’t a truth or a way better than other. It’s all about tastes.

Despite the catchy title, I don’t think I’m revolutionizing code indentations with my proposal. What I know for sure is that 3 spaces aren’t used a lot to indent code. This is proved by the fact that none of the in-browser developer tools gives you the option to set 3 spaces. They all give you the choice between 2 and 4 spaces, and tabs (or 8 spaces). I don’t know if this post will convince someone to change his convention or at least to give 3-spaces code indentation a try, but I still want to share my opinion.

Job Offers Errors and How to Avoid Them

Job Offers Errors and How to Avoid Them

As we all know, IT is a growing field and it’s easy to find a job (at least compared to other fields). We’re overwhelmed by job offers and recruiters emails sent to find the right person for their clients. Unfortunately, many of these offers are written by people without any clue of what they are talking about. Others are written without the will to end up something meaningful and appealing. This is really sad as it wastes people’s time and it’s also counterproductive for the companies. Most of the time the only result these job offers will have is to let potential candidates down, thus avoiding applying for the role.

In this article, I’ll discuss some of the most common job offers errors I’ve found recently on the web and how to fix them.

My Experience at 4Developers 2014

My Experience at 4Developers 2014

In March I announced via Twitter my participation as a speaker at 4Developers 2014. 4Developers 2014 was a single-day, multi-track and multi-language conference held in the lovely Warsaw on the  at the Gromada Airport Hotel. The tracks for the edition of this year were: Java, .Net, PHP, Python, Front-end (HTML5, JS, CSS), UX, Games Development, Mobile Systems & Apps, Mobile Games, Cloud Technologies, Application Architecture, Soft Skills & Business Relations, IT Project Management, and IT Security. At the conference I gave my talk Modern front-end with the eyes of a PHP developer in the PHP track.

The aim of this post is to describe my experience as a speaker and as an attendee.

Learn how to Write an Email. Seriously.

Email icon

As a freelancer I receive a lot of emails every day. In addition to the usual ones (newsletters, friends, and so on), I receive emails from recruiters that want to find me a job, from people that want to hire me for a project, from people that want me to solve their programming issues, and finally from people that have read some articles of mine and what to ask something on that topic. I think this might sound familiar to most of you.

Believe it or not, what I’ve discovered over the time is that 80% of people (at least those who write me) don’t have a clue about how to write an email in a proper way. In this article, I’ll highlight some common mistakes in the hope that things will change.

Why People Think PHP Sucks!

PHP logo

A long time has been passed since the first release of PHP. Over the years the language has been improved a lot, in terms of performance and features, thanks to the work of many contributors. At the same time, also its adoption among developers is grown dramatically. Looking at the latest statistics, PHP is used on the 81.7% of all websites; an outstanding result. Nonetheless, several top companies and developers have always looked at PHP as a kind of bad, silly, and for snotty kids language.

In this highly opinionated article, I’ll try to explain some of the reasons behind these judges. I’ve collected them over the time, talking with other developers and reading some articles spread on the web.

Learning Curve: What it is and How it Applies to Information Technology

General learning curve

The terms “learning curve” and “steep learning curve” are often talked and written in Computer Science. At the time I could not understand deeply those terms, every time I found them I felt like I was missing something that all programmers except me already knew. After, I realised that there are a lot of people that misused them in discussions and forum and this fact created a clutter. In this article I’ll explain what these terms means and how they can be applied to IT.