Articles

Vibe Coding, Kotlin, Finance, and Data Visualization

Vibe Coding, Kotlin, Finance, and Data Visualization

Recently, I came across a paper discussing an experiment and tried to reproduce it. Here’s a brief summary: - Portfolio A: In a bull market, grows by 20%; in a bear market, drops by 20%. - Portfolio B: In a bull market, grows by 25%; in a bear market, drops by 35%. - Bull market probability: 75%. According to the paper, both portfolios should have a one-year expected return of 10%.
Treat life like a marathon, not like a sprint

Treat life like a marathon, not like a sprint

Like most of us, I am daily flooded with thoughts about life, my objective position in it, whether I am missing anything, or whether I need to do better. Am I providing enough for my family? Is my career on track? Am I being healthy enough? Am I just passing through life instead of aiming to strive? Those thoughts have been slowly mitigated, but they never got away. Over time, I have been slowly accepting this reality, and I came to realise that all the marathon training and long-distance running have helped me come to terms with these facts.
Uploading SARIF Reports to GitHub

Uploading SARIF Reports to GitHub

Recently I wanted to add Lint reports to a repository on GitHub. The goal is to report potential Lint violations when new code is committed, to make sure that all the committed code is lint-warning-free and pretty. My first idea was to look for a GitHub action that could run ./gradlew lint and report it as a PR comment. After asking about ideas in the Android Study Group, Carter Jernigan and Justin Brooks suggested me to upload directly the SARIF files into GitHub.
KotlinConf 2024 announcements

KotlinConf 2024 announcements

The first day of the KotlinConf 2024 is over, and there has been a significant amount. After 5 years the conference happened again at The Bella Center in Copenhagen, a fantastic venue close to the historical center of the Danish capital. The last two weeks have been intense, with the Google I/O announcing another set of relevant features for Android and Kotlin developers. Most notably, Google is now supporting KMP for Android development.
HTTP chunk requests with Android and ktor

HTTP chunk requests with Android and ktor

In this very short article, I will explain briefly what is a chunk or streamed HTTP request, what are the benefits of using it, and how it works in Android. Android apps use HTTP requests to download data from a backend. This information is stored and processed on the app to make it functional. HTTP requests are executed using different frameworks on Android. The most common ones are Retrofit or OkHttp.
My Investing Summary of 2022

My Investing Summary of 2022

Another solar rotation passed, and the world experienced a plethora of unexpected events. In the aftermath of the Corona epidemic that altered the course of the last couple of years, we had the unfortunate invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, the tightening of Corona measures in China (and toward the end of the year, their withdrawal and gradual reopening of the economy), an ongoing economic recession, the rate hike by the FED and the general uncertainty of the most immediate future.
KMP, iOS Developers and Production

KMP, iOS Developers and Production

Kotlin Multiplatform (or KMP, KMM Mobile, etc) has been widely used for a number of years in applications that are currently in production. JetBrains compiled a website listing some of the companies that are currently using KMP. Since the advent of the mobile platforms we enjoy today, there has always been a certain market interest to push multiplatform technologies, such as Cordova, Xamarin, and others. With more or less success, those technologies aimed to provide a unified framework to develop multiple codebases, mostly focusing on the aspect of pricing (create code once, deploy multiple times).
A recapitulation of investing in pandemic times

A recapitulation of investing in pandemic times

It has been around 14 months since the pandemic started. We have all been affected by it to a greater or lesser degree, and the investing world has not been an exception (although surprisingly, the stock market is one of the winners of the pandemic). In this post I will share how the pandemic changed my investment thesis, the things I learned, and the mistakes I did. 14 months into the crisis of our generation (and with a few months to recover whatever the new normal will be), we now know that things will never be the way they used to be.
A short story of randomness (I)

A short story of randomness (I)

I have always been fascinated by the above comic strip. A discussion on randomness and determinism becomes as much a philosophical issue as it is a practical one. They are used in a variety of applications: from the obvious cryptography, gaming or gambling to the less evident politics or arts. How can we be sure that a number is random? Will observing the process mine our efforts on generating the random number, similar to the observation of a cat inside a box with a decaying radioactive atom?
From Java to Kotlin and back (III): Calling Java from Kotlin

From Java to Kotlin and back (III): Calling Java from Kotlin

This article is part of a series. You can find the remaining article of the series here: From Java to Kotlin and back (I) — Calling Kotlin from Java From Java to Kotlin and back (II): Calling Kotlin from Java In this last chapter of the series, we will evaluate consideration when calling Java code from Kotlin. One could argue that even in this situation happens often, keeping considerations in mind for some code that might legacy is not that practical.
From Java to Kotlin and back (II): Calling Kotlin from Java

From Java to Kotlin and back (II): Calling Kotlin from Java

This article is part of a series. You can find the remaining article of the series here: From Java to Kotlin and back (II): Calling Kotlin from Java From Java to Kotlin and back (III): Calling Java from Kotlin In the previous article, we explored how Java and Kotlin can interact with each other, and some considerations in this regard. In this second edition, we will keep reflecting on some relevant aspects to consider when Java is calling Kotlin.
From Java to Kotlin and back (I): Java calling Kotlin

From Java to Kotlin and back (I): Java calling Kotlin

This article is part of a series. You can find the remaining article of the series here: From Java to Kotlin and back (II): Calling Kotlin from Java From Java to Kotlin and back (III): Calling Java from Kotlin I am currently working on a multi-module project that combines a variety of Java and Kotlin code, so I decided to publish my thought and notes as an article series. It will likely help me as a journaling practice, and hopefully can help other potential readers that end up here trying to find some tips while they are facing the same problem.
Considerations when creating Android libraries

Considerations when creating Android libraries

If you are an Android developer, chances are you might have been working on your own Android libraries. A library is a useful way to create a reusable set of features that need to be integrated through different apps (or even different libraries). A library is a self-contained package including code and resources required to execute some functionality. Importing a library in our Android app is the same process as importing a .
GitHub Actions for Android developers

GitHub Actions for Android developers

If you are developing Android apps, chances are you have confronted any sort of CI at some point in your career. If you thought Android fragmentation was a thing, the wide availability of CI systems will be familiar to you. GitHub Actions was released around November 2019, and since then it has proved itself to be reliable for a production environment (one of our requirements before committing to any software system).
Using the Signature class to verify data

Using the Signature class to verify data

When there is an exchange of information happening, we often want to verify that the origin of the data is the right one. This can be used to ensure that the right clients are having access to our resources. For instance, let’s imagine that we want to ensure that an authorized device is querying a file with sensitive information from our backend. An immediate solution could be to use a X-Api-Token in our device.
Managing the Kotlin Weekly

Managing the Kotlin Weekly

I just sent the issue #182 of the Kotlin Weekly. #182 means that this has been the week 182 that the Kotlin Weekly is alive. Many things have changed since the first edition on the 7th of August 2017, sent to over 200 initial subscribers with 5 articles. In some of the first editions, the content was so scarce that I ended up writing my own articles to include them, or adding some code snippets I posted on Twitter.
2019 in retrospective

2019 in retrospective

This year is over. During the last 365 days, I fulfilled some of the goals I meticulously established at the beginning of the year. In other goals, I failed without palliatives or anesthesia. During the last 9 years, I have been following a process to determine my goals for the upcoming solar rotation. I sit at a coffee place next to my home in Munich, order a ginger tea and take notes.
A Gentle Introduction to Investing for Software Engineers (IV) — My methodology to determine which…

A Gentle Introduction to Investing for Software Engineers (IV) — My methodology to determine which…

You can access all the articles of the series through the following links: (I) — Motivation (II) — Compounding interest and introducing other factors (III) — Determining a company value and acquisition point (IV) — My methodology to determine which stock to buy In this fourth and last article of the series, I will explain my methodology to acquire individual stock in the market. Most of the guidelines I expose are thought of as a guideline that you might need to adapt depending on your circumstances (for instance, the double taxation will play a role depending on your tax residence).
Re-post: Which city has the most intense Android scene in Europe?

Re-post: Which city has the most intense Android scene in Europe?

I wrote this post originally 5 years ago. For a side project, I had to use the StackExchange data explorer again, so I decided to revisit it and update the numbers. StackExchange Data Explorer is an open-source tool to run SQL queries against public data from StackOverflow. Since StackOverflow is the biggest development forum of the world, there is surely a lot of information that companies can actually retrieve from their system in order to take some business decision (this is actually a brilliant place to apply BigData)
Using Git Hooks to improve your development workflow

Using Git Hooks to improve your development workflow

Recently, I was contributing for the first time to a new codebase. I extended and implemented some functionality that I needed. After thorough testing on my machine, where I checked that the functionality was properly working, I committed my contribution. Minutes after, our CI environment delivered a message: 4 Tests failed This happens so often, even on the codebases we are used to work with. We tend to focus on developing the new features, and forget that there is a test that is covering them.
A Gentle Introduction to Investing for Software Engineers (III) —Determining a company value and…

A Gentle Introduction to Investing for Software Engineers (III) —Determining a company value and…

You can access all the articles of the series through the following links: (I) — Motivation (II) — Compounding interest and introducing other factors (III) — Determining a company value and acquisition point (IV) — My methodology to determine which stock to buy In this third article of the series, I am giving an introduction to some of the factors that we commonly use to determine whether a company is apt for our investment strategy, whether it is the right moment to acquire stock, and in general to provide us some insight beneath the numbers.
A Gentle Introduction to Investing for Software Engineers (II) — Compounding interest and…

A Gentle Introduction to Investing for Software Engineers (II) — Compounding interest and…

You can access all the articles of the series through the following links: (I) — Motivation (II) — Compounding interest and introducing other factors (III) — Determining a company value and acquisition point (IV) — My methodology to determine which stock to buy In this second article of the series, I want to keep exploring some metrics to show the evolution of our investment keeping in mind different scenarios. This time I will be including screenshots from a Google Spreadsheet instead of displaying text tables.
A Gentle Introduction to Investing for Software Engineers (I) — Motivation

A Gentle Introduction to Investing for Software Engineers (I) — Motivation

You can access all the articles of the series through the following links: (I) — Motivation (II) — Compounding interest and introducing other factors (III) — Determining a company value and acquisition point (IV) — My methodology to determine which stock to buy If you are reading this article, chances are you a Software Engineer that has ended up here looking up for saving, investment or retirement advice. Or maybe you have a different profession, but ended up here anyway.
Approaching a methodology to select speakers for conferences

Approaching a methodology to select speakers for conferences

After a great first edition, this year I organised the second edition of the Droidcon Vietnam with some local folks. Before I organised a conference like this, my experience was limited to local Meetups in Munich (I am currently the organiser of the Kotlin User Group Munich, and the Firebase User Group Munich). The latter has a different nature in terms of resources, logistics and efforts required. They are community-based events, local and — without requiring an easy trajectory — they are certainly less complex than the former.
Creating a library for Android: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Creating a library for Android: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Software Development is like an Ouroboros. You end up going to the place you have previously resided, with requirements and knowledge updated and refashioned. You might have started working on an initial prototype that began the journey as a basic HelloWorld, and it has evolved into one of those mythological Nordic monsters. Or maybe Greek monsters are more terrifying and frightening. I do not know. At one of my projects we recently came up with the requirement of extracting some of the functionality well buried there to expose to third-party consumers.
On Strategies to apply Kotlin to existing Java code

On Strategies to apply Kotlin to existing Java code

Since the latest announcement at the Google I/O, things have been crazy. At the Kotlin Weekly Mail List we had an increase in subscribers over 20% in the last two weeks, over 200% increase in article submissions, and at a Meetup I organise (Kotlin Users Group Munich) we had a huge increase in attendees. And all this combined with the general blast in the developers community. A trend that will only continue to grow.
A follow-up on how to store tokens securely in Android

A follow-up on how to store tokens securely in Android

As a prologue to this article, I want to remark a short sentence for the notional reader. This quote will be important as we move forward. Absolute security does not exist. Security is a set of measures, being piled up and combined, trying to slow down the inevitable. Almost three years ago, I wrote a post giving some ideas to protect String tokens from a hypothetical attacker decompiling our Android application.
Using Firebase as a Real Time System

Using Firebase as a Real Time System

I was captivated by exposed pictures since I was a child. Is a unique way to capture movement in a static image. I have been an avid user of Firebase since more than a year now. When Parse.com announced it would be shutting off, I was attending a Google Launchpad in Mountain View as a mentor. If you haven’t heard of the Google Launchpads, they are great. Not only for the startups, which get a fair amount of advising and mentoring from people in different fields (UX, Tech, Marketing, Monetizing and Fund raising…) but also for mentors itself!
Learning to use and abuse Mutability

Learning to use and abuse Mutability

I am an old Java man, I never allocated many of my thoughts to reflect on the philosophy of mutability. In Java, unlike in other languages, there is no precise control over what is mutable and immutable. I never thought of Java objects as having this feature. Instead, I would always refer to them as “that Java class that has no setter”. “That Java class that cannot be modified once the value has been set up”.
An Overview of Polls for (Android) (Mobile) Developers in 2016

An Overview of Polls for (Android) (Mobile) Developers in 2016

Last year I started a weekly routine consisting on posting on my Twitter a poll every Monday, with topics related to Android / Mobile / Software Engineering (in that order). It has been a total of 18 polls during the year, with an overwhelming response and engagement of the community. (On a side note, I can‘t stress enough how lucky I am of being able to be a part of the Worldwide Android District.
On properly using volatile and synchronized

On properly using volatile and synchronized

In the last weeks I have been writing about the transient modifier and the different types of references available in Java. I want to hold the topic of underused/misused topics in Java and bring you this week the volatile and synchronized modifiers . Multithreading is an entire discipline that takes years to master and properly understand. We will keep a short introduction in this article. In computing, a resource can be accessed from different threads concurrently.
Diving deeper into the Java transient modifier

Diving deeper into the Java transient modifier

Nothing is tied forever. Neither are transient variables. Last week I published an article to help you understand how references do work in Java. It had a great acceptance, and I got a lot of constructive feedback. That is why I love the software community. Today I want to present you another article diving into a topic that it is not widely used: the transient modifier. Personally, when I started using it I recall I was able to quickly grasp the theoretical aspect of it, although applying was a question of a different nature.
Finally understanding how references work in Android and Java

Finally understanding how references work in Android and Java

A few weeks ago I attended Mobiconf, one of the best conferences for Mobile Developers I had the pleasure to attend in Poland. During his eclectic presentation “The best (good) practices”, my friend and colleague Jorge Barroso came up with a statement that made me reflect after hearing it: If you are an Android developer and you do not use WeakReferences, you have a problem. On an example of good timing, a couple of months ago I did publish my last book, “Android High Performance”, co-authored with Diego Grancini.
You live in a better world today

You live in a better world today

This has been a very tragic week in Germany. In less than five days, four attacks happened in the southern provinces of Bayern and Baden-Württemberg (the motivation of some of them being disputed, but being mostly assigned to the refugee crisis and open-borders policy of Merkel). After the attacks followed the classical harangue from certain civil and political sectors drawing attention on the rapidly deteriorating social peace in Germany and Europe.
The theoretical animal

The theoretical animal

We are theoretical animals. We spend our entire lives analyzing our immediate environment, theorising on how to solve our most immediate problems or improve processes. We think of having conversations with beloved people, we think of carrying out actions we have planned for a while with relatives and friends, and we think of starting new projects. Yet we do little to implement them and put all this knowledge into practice.
A Comprehensive Introduction to Perform an Efficient Android Code Review

A Comprehensive Introduction to Perform an Efficient Android Code Review

You are working in a team that cares about code quality. You have been doing -or thinking of doing- some code pairing. Your team regularly carry out hacking events to talk and present new technologies, or to talk about the personal discoveries of each member. And you are trying to devise the perfect code review process for your organisation. Is this situation familiar to you? Code reviews are hard to implement.
Automating Android development

Automating Android development

I have been recently talking at the DroidCon Spain and DroidCon Italy about how to automate a traditional Android workflow. To my surprise, there are still many organisations that do lack a Continuous Integration (CI) strategy. This is a big mistake! I decided to put down in words my thoughts about how to efficiently implement CI. As a software engineer, your aim is to automate as many processes as possible. Machines are more efficient than people: they do not need food neither sleep, they perform tasks errorless and they make your life easier.
Event-driven programming for Android (part III)

Event-driven programming for Android (part III)

(This is the third article in a three-part series) Previously, I have given an introduction to Event Driven programming with Android, and show some code to create a HelloWorld Event-Driven application. Now we are likely facing another problem: how can we easily scale an application using Event-Driven development without falling into a messy and unorganised code? In this article, I will provide a proposal architecture that serves to scale an application based on Event-Driven development, but that can also be used to create a more general type of applications.
Event-driven programming for Android (part II)

Event-driven programming for Android (part II)

(This is the second article in a three-part series) In the previous article we had a short introduction into Event-Driven programming. Now let’s see some actual code and how to perform the basics with EventBus. First I will present the entities that play a central role in Event-Driven programming. Refer to the following image taken from the EventBus repository. An Event Bus. This is the central communication channel that connects all the other entities.
Event-driven programming for Android (part I)

Event-driven programming for Android (part I)

(This is the first article in a three-part series) Although Android includes some event-driven features in its development, it is far away from being a pure event-driven architecture. Is this something good or bad? As in every issue with software development the answer is not easy: it depends. First, let’s establish a definition for event-driven development. This is a programming paradigm where the flow of execution is determined by events triggered by actions (such user interaction, messaging from other threads, etc).

2019 in retrospective

Planted December 27, 2019
Pruned June 9, 2025

2019 in retrospective

This year is over. During the last 365 days, I fulfilled some of the goals I meticulously established at the beginning of the year. In other goals, I failed without palliatives or anesthesia.

During the last 9 years, I have been following a process to determine my goals for the upcoming solar rotation. I sit at a coffee place next to my home in Munich, order a ginger tea and take notes. I reflect about how the previous year went, and determine where I would like to be in the upcoming one.

I have been writing on a notepad my daily thoughts , feelings and events for years. This has been one of the best habits I have acquired. I can literally go to any random day in the last years, take my notepad and see a detailed description of my life at that time. That is very helpful to put everything under perspective, and see whether things are getting better or not.

Spoiler: life tends to get better.

Both as a principle of transparency and self-reflection, I would like to summarize this year in terms of achieved milestones, failed ones and see how to improve them facing the upcoming 2020. This will serve me as a public note to come back through the upcoming months, and see whether I am doing well or not. If it helps other folks to improve their process or take some ideas, it will be already worth it.

Towards the end of every year, I used to establish a set of targets I wanted to achieve. Each target needs to fill some requirements:

  • They need to be concrete (“saving 10.000 EUR”, for instance). If a quantitative determination is not possible, try to get as close as you can.
  • They need to be rather challenging and even outside of my current abilities. I included this rule after reading the story of the Archer and the Moon, by Alejandro Jodorowsky. The sort TL;DR: of this story: upon a time, there was an archer that wanted to shoot an arrow to the moon to become the best archer in the world. He tried and tried and could not succeed, and everybody mocked him while he was relentlessly training. He never got to reach the moon, but his commitment and the million arrows he shot made him undoubtedly the best archer in the world. This has worked out for me in the past: I have failed at some established targets, but they pushed the final result more than I expected. Following the previous example of saving money: if you commit yourself to save 500K EUR in a year, you will need to absolutely change your mindset to A), earn more than 500K and B), save the necessary amount. It might not even be possible in a year, but it will set the foundations for future years.
  • If last year the target A was accomplished, the following target must necessarily be more challenging (for instance: if last year your target was to save 10.000 EUR and you saved 11.000 EUR, this year it cannot be less than 11.000 EUR).

I have divided my review and goals in 5 categories that today are very present in my life: running, programming, books, investing and miscellanea. Let’s start with running.

Running in retrospective

2019 has been the most prolific year in terms of running in my life. I smashed all my previous running records, except 10K. I run a total of 2.348 KM. I also run my first ultra (71K in DaNang, March 15th), and the highest (and hardest) ultra (Zugspitsr ultra, 62K and 3.639 elevation climb). I paced my first half-marathon (Saigon, 8th December at 1:50). I started registering for races in 2017, and this has absolutely paid off.

image These aseptic numbers and statistics hide a tremendous amount of pain, blood and tears.

Every race I run today is a potential candidate for a PB. I run faster and smarter than ever. I have been during some seasons running marathons weekly, and I can say this is related to the point mentioned above: challenges must be rather challenging. A few years ago I could not even imagine running a marathon, and today I can probably go out running anytime and improve my previous PB.

  • 5KM: I run the 23rd of November 5K at 19:32. This was after buying the Nike Zoom, and it is early to say if they influenced my running — my initial impression about them is very positive.
  • 10K: I could not defeat my previous PB of 36:49 from October 2017. This was a flat run in Zürich — and I also felt especially fast those days. Right now I cannot seem to beat this distance — my best 10K this year was 46:57 on December 6th. Next year I will not focus on beating my PR in 10K, since I am focusing on distance running.
  • 21K: I run my fastest half-marathon this year near Seoul at 1:39:56.
  • 42K: I run my fastest marathon this year in Kyoto at 3:28:51
  • I joined the Spartan Trifecta Tribe after completing a Sprint, Super and Beast in a calendar year.

Unfortunately, I developed a tendinitis on my right feet, and depending on its evolution I might need to adapt some goals. It is currently not tragic, but it does prevent me from running when it is painful.

Running goals for 2020

  • Running the Chicago Marathon: this is part of a bigger goal, the 6 Abbott Stars. I have run so far in NYC and Berlin.
  • Running a marathon in a different continent: I am currently considering the marathon of Nairobi and the marathon of Sydney. This is also part of a bigger goal — running a marathon in each continent.
  • Running at least 100K.

Long term goals

As stated before, I have a few long term goals when it comes to running:

  • Running the 6 Abbott Stars (depends too much of when I can qualify for Boston)
  • Running an ultra on each continent (finishing by 2023). Here Antarctica is an issue — there is only one ultra, and it is particularly hard to get in.
  • Running a marathon on each continent (finishing by 2023)
  • Running a marathon under 3 hours — and hence qualify for Boston.
  • Running the Barkley’s marathon.

In 2020 I will not be focusing on speedrunning, but on distance running. I want to switch my focus to run faster marathons, but this will not happen in 2020.

Programming in retrospective

Some time ago, I observed my GitHub contribution graph to determine that I was following a routine when it comes to programming. Over time I have completely discarded this metric — it is just highly misleading, and does not correlate with any learning or goal achieved, besides programming for a number of days in a row.

Instead, at the beginning of 2019 I came up with the following objectives:

  • Working on a real project using Golang.
  • Working on a real project using Rust.
  • Working on a real project using Scala.
  • Writing one technical book.
  • Finish the book “Seven Languages in Seven Weeks”.

I am happy to have been able to work on a short gig on a backend using Golang. I have been developing software professionally for 12 years, and although I have been mostly involved with Android I kept an equal engagement with the backend side of the things (mostly Java, and lately Kotlin).

I have finished innumerable tutorials and small projects with Golang, Rush and Scala, but this was never enough to jump into the more advanced aspects of it. Any tutorial or small project does not need to scale too much, and I know that this is a crucial aspect that can barely be learned in the free time.

Hence, at the beginning of 2019 I started answering to those recruiters that were a bit confused with the mix of keywords. All software engineers receive random messages from recruiters talking about roles they barely relate with, and I understand most of the time this becomes annoying. However, I took the decision to answer all of those recruiters. Particularly the recruiters asking me for Golang roles and gigs.

I followed an approach that I tried in the past, and it was to state the following:

“Although I do understand and feel comfortable with Golang, I have not worked in any real project with it. I truly want to learn more about it. I have over 12 years of experience in Software Engineer, and I am willing to work on this gig part-time for a lower hourly rate“.

This is a technique I have used in the past to learn other technologies, and it has helped me quite a lot — and I think it also helped the companies hiring me. They get a fairly seasoned developer for a lower price. Seasoned engineers will catch up with a technology or a language rather fast, and get the project done. I have been working in real-world projects developing a full backend with NodeJS, Python and even Haskell in the past.

I had a great experience working for a Berliner Startup for a few months working on their backend, and learned a lot while doing it. I also helped them quite a bit setting their CI/CD environment, which was still quite immature. They ended up very happy with the results, and now I occasionally help them with some Code Reviews.

I am very appealed by the use of Go in backends — Google has been using it intensively. It is fast — really fast- robust and efficient. It is great to use it in parallel processes. I was very happy with the experience, and now I feel I am ready to work on wider Golang projects.

Unfortunately, I was not able to work on any Scala or Rust projects. To keep it short: I want to learn more Scala to make my FP foundations stronger, and I want to learn Rust since I ready a bunch of articles exposing its virtues. So if your company is hiring and would like to have on-board an experienced engineer with dedication and commitment to learn, ping me.

Unfortunately, the next goal (“Writing a technical book”) could not be fulfilled. I am still working on it, but is not yet ready to be announced.

The last goal, finishing the book “Seven Languages in Seven Weeks”, could not be completed either. I am taking all those unaccomplished goals into 2020.

Even if professionally 2019 has been great and I have learned a lot — I have been working on really challenging and interesting projects at my client, and I have a big sense of accomplishment and belonging there — I just did not complete all my goals for 2019. This was disappointing and needs to be solved in 2020.

Programming goals for 2020

I will be keeping the unaccomplished goals, and adding a few more:

  • Finding a part-time gig to work on a real-time project using Scala.
  • Finding a part-time gig to work on a real-time project using Rust.
  • Publishing a technical book.
  • Finishing the book Seven Languages in Seven Weeks.
  • I have developed an API with Kotlin and ktor for my private investment template. I will either open-source the entire API, or monetize it offering access with some license plan.
  • I will publish at least one open-source library.

Books in retrospective

2019 has been a mixed year. I always try to read 50 books each year, and most of the years I accomplished this. This year has been more busy than usual, and I failed on this goal.

image

I published “Living by the Code”, which has received really nice and positive feedback since it was released. Since I read “Tools of Titans” and “Tribe of Mentors” from Tim Ferris, this was always an idea hovering over my mind. I wanted to know what other folks in tech think and do, and how they could share their ideas with a very wide community, hungry for inspiration. “Living by the Code” lived up to its expectations, and this project will continue in one direction or another.

I have been working on a technical book that is not yet ready to be published. I hope to reach a state in the upcoming months where it can be announced.

Book goals for 2020

  • Work on a sequel for “Living by the Code” — and determine whether this should be a completely new title, a series of podcast, an update over LBTC, etc.
  • Publish my technical book.
  • Read 50 books.

Investing in retrospective

2019 has been the year where the dividends of my investment strategy are (literally) paying off. The following goals were accomplished:

  • Together with my colleague Kevin Read, I started the podcast “I/O Investing”. We also started together the “Munich Investor Meetup”.
  • I also started a Slack group, the “Investment Study Group”. We have nice discussions over there of the things we are doing and learning, and many people are currently contributing with their knowledge.
  • I smashed my forecasts for dividends and growth of my portfolio. I do not like to compare myself with the evolution of the S&P or any other index, since I am exclusively following a DGI approach. However, even in this particular good year (the S&P500 went up 29%), my portfolio beat the index — it went up by 31.2%. Dividends were up 3.4% more than I expected when I forecasted it at the beginning of 2019.

For the upcoming year, my portfolio and investing strategy will just keep the same cruise speed as in 2019. I will keep investing an amount of money every month, reinvest all the dividends and do DRIP when it is possible, and also invest all the extra cash in my portfolio growth. I will be able to cover my living expenses in 14–18 months, assuming a dividend increase of 4% and inflation of 2%. It might move a few months back or forth, but this inflection point should happen rather soon.

Here there are some graphs of my current portfolio — this information is particularly interesting to be contrasted at the end of 2020.

image Pie chart with portfolio representation Bar char with portfolio representation

image Sectors representation

image Super sectors representation

image Country distribution

image Portfolio ranks

image Dividend evolution

Investing goals for 2020

  • I will receive in 2020 at least 27% more dividends than in 2019.
  • (repeated) I will open-source or monetize my dividend API for my investment template. There are many APIs out there, but all are expensive and the information is not properly presented. I think there is a demand for a proper DGI API that can be used to track personal portfolios.
  • King, aristocrat and contenders should account for 50% of my portfolio.
  • Defensive and sensitive companies in my portfolio should account for 75%. Defensive should account for 40%
  • Do at least a monthly technical analysis of a company in my portfolio.
  • I want to increase my exposure in Canada to 5% of my portfolio, and include some of the companies on my radar (most notably, Toronto Dominio Bank and Enbridge).

Long term goals

There is a lot of literacy and hope-posts about FIRE, and what to do when this moment is achieved. Now that I see it rather close, I do not plan any single change in my lifestyle. I do enjoy what I do, my daily hours have a lot of meaning and joy, and I want to keep doing what I do as many years as possible. I do not consider in the medium term any change in my routines.

Miscellanea in perspective

This category will act as a tailor’s drawer, and all the goals that do not belong to the previous ones will be inserted here.

My goals for 2020 in the miscellanea category are:

  • Reduce radically my trips. I have been often very keen to take any random plane to speak at a conference event if I was invited, and this has taken a toll on my well-being. Too many hours of loneliness in a plane just trigger my anxiety. In 2020, I will be only speaking at local events, or events that can be easily reached by public transportation. I travel around 86.666 KM in 2019, and this is just unsustainable.
  • Spending more time with my partner. Directly correlated to the previous one. Next year her visa for Europe will be hopefully settled, so we can spend longer period of time together.
  • Writing more articles. My focus this year in the community contributions have been mostly engagements in speaking. This year I will be drifting towards writing content, which is also more time effective. I will write at least one article per month.
  • The header images of each of my articles are photographies I took. I did not take as many photographies this year, and this is a hobby I am very delighted with. Taking a photography is not only the moment were the shutter opens and lets the light in: it is all the previous research of a location, the waiting hours, hunting for the perfect weather conditions, the conversation with the people around. I will be taking at least 12 photographies I can showcase during 2020, one per month.
  • The Kotlin Weekly, a weekly mailing list sending on Sunday news regarding the Kotlin universe, has grown to a very decent size and it is now a renowned source of information for all Kotlin developers and enthusiasts. This year I managed to update the website and the mailing list design. For 2020, I would like to automate the project of writing, sending and updating the “Latest issues” on the website, as well as providing an automatic way to hire sponsors ad (probably directly booking and paying with PayPal on the website).

I will revisit this post at the end of 2020. For all the readers that reached so far, I wish you a happy 2020 full of happiness, achievements and joy.

I write my thoughts about Software Engineering and life in general on my Twitter account. If you have liked this article or it did help you, feel free to share it, ♥ it and/or leave a comment. This is the currency that fuels amateur writers.