Hugo Corbucci's Blog

Automating your tutorials as tests

Posted on March 11th, 2015

A few years back, I was working on StoryTouch, a desktop application which was meant to be used by users of an industry niche. As part of the release strategy, our product manager, Paulo Morelli, decided that it would be great to offer video tutorials explaining the basic usage of the software.

As those tutorials were recorded and we were making fast paced...

The Lean Startup - by Eric Ries

Posted on March 7th, 2015

This book has now become a classical for any person trying to start a company that isn’t going to replicate an established business. It may be a product (software or hardware) or a new service. So long as what you’re going to start isn’t just replicating an established and well understood business, you should read this book. The fact that it is associated to the start up world of...

The Fire Seekers (The Babel Trilogy Book 1) - by Richard Farr

Posted on February 28th, 2015

The book is a fiction story written in first person narrator called Daniel Calder, "not-as-bright" son of two "geniuses".
His father, William Calder, is a proeminent linguistic expert in essentially all ancient middle eastern languages, famous professor at the University of Washington. He is what is called a Babbler. Can talk at least 10 different languages and picks new ones up very...

Talking with Tech Leads - Hugo's answers

Posted on February 26th, 2015

What should a Tech Lead focus on and why?

In my experience as a Tech Lead, my focus is on ensuring the team’s vision and direction for the code matches the product’s vision and direction. As part of that work, I need to have conversations with both the team developing the product as well as the people driving it and anyone else that will live with that product (operations, other teams etc).
Most times, this calls for conversations. Be that in meetings or in corridor...

Talking with Tech Leads - From Novice to Practitioners - by Patrick Kua

Posted on February 20th, 2015

In this book, Patrick Kua gathered a lot of interviews from multiple people that are or were, at some point, playing the role of Tech Lead in a team.
He starts off by defining what he is calling Tech Lead and how hard it is to tackle the role as most people are not really trained or prepared for it. His definition of Technical Leader is:
“A leader, responsible for a development...

Marked (The Servants of Fate - Book 1) - by Sarah Fine

Posted on February 14th, 2015

A nice fiction romance drags the reader through the Romeo and Juliet story of Cacy Ferry and Eli Margolis. Written in third person but with a narrator that alternates the view points of the story between Cacy and Eli’s make the feeling almost like a first person narration with some detachment.
Their surroundings reveal a post semi apocalyptic future in which Kers, ruled by Jason Moros, and...

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies - by Jared Diamond

Posted on February 6th, 2015

Summary

This anthropology book goes back in time before mankind was a dominant species and explores how we evolved the way we did.
The book starts off with a question which guides the book's line of thought: Why did Eurasians came to be the dominant human group and not native Americans, New Guineans, Australian Aborigines or SubSaharian groups?

The rest follows as a very summarized...

Javascript heavy projects

Posted on February 4th, 2015

I’ve recently started a project which will include a clojure service, an Android client, an iOS client and a rails website which will do a bunch of the user management but also provide a Javascript client to the clojure...

Reality is Broken - Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World - by Jane McGonigal

Posted on January 30th, 2015

Book summary:
The book starts by describing some principles that describe what a good game has/does. Jane summarizes it in 4 important points:
  1. A goal: Important to give the player a sense of purpose
  2. Rules: Limitations into how to achieve the goal. The limitations force the player to be creative while looking for...

My first Clojure project

Posted on January 28th, 2015

As part of a game I’m working on with a friend from college, we needed a server that could receive and send messages to multiple players taking part of one shared game. My very first idea was to go with Rails as it is my default framework of choice to start a quick web project with. However, Rails is single threaded and, although there are web servers that will allow you to start up multiple instances of your Rails application to serve multiple...