Who am I

My name is Felipe Bandeira, I'm a very lucky brazilian developer. I say that because I had the luck to find the love of my life at quite a young age (13 years old), even though we would only meet and marry at 22 (she is the first person I talked to, online). I'm the father of three loving and full of energy kids. I have a few friends that I can trust, and not long ago I found the job that made me stop hating mondays. Those are the most precious things in my life, and I consider myself extremely lucky because of them.

My background

My first contact with computers happened when I was 8, my aunt gave my family an x286 computer, where I learned the basics of the command line. A few years later we bought an x586 with Win95, and after getting into trouble a few times for corrupting the system, I learned how to format a computer. I still remember the feeling of relief, happiness and boldness. My first contact with programming happened when I was learning how to use EasyUO, a macroing tool for Ultima Online, the first MMORPG I played. I didn't know it at the time, and it took me several years to find out, but the scripts I used to create were procedural programming scripts, and I loved to create them and let the computer work for me.

I didn't always work as a developer, I worked at many different industries (food, chemical, retail, aviation, and a few more) and roles before. Life wasn't easy and I had to take the best job I could, it didn't matter if I enjoyed it or not. I did several gigs as an IT technician, formatting, setting up networks, upgrading hardware, etc. This experience taught me to see things from different perspectives, and with that, I developed a lot my empathy and conflict management skills, which are very useful as a dad of three kids! I also learned a lot about respect, responsibility and especially teamwork, even when you're not really in a team, I mean, two or more persons working at the same place, they could work together, they can help each other, even in different roles or at different companies.

Why the blog

This blog is the solution I found for a few objectives I had in mind:

• Create a 'repository' of things learned: not something like git, but a tool that would allow me to record my explanation about how I figured out a certain problem, creating my own 'virtual rubber duck'. I also wanted to be able to group the information in topics, so I could keep it organized and check it later, checking my evolution and understanding more about my learning process.
• Contribute to the tech community: explain concepts differently, under a new perspective, share specific problems that took me a long time researching (and usually required some tweaks on the solution, took some more time); share what I've learned and help others.
• Improve my writing skill: today I mostly code, and I used to write a lot, like letters, thoughts, etc. I miss that and was looking for a way to get back at it, also improving my communication.

I considered creating a YouTube channel, but that's not for me (maybe in the future). The catch is when we run into a problem and that red light is flashing in our face, is practically impossible to find a solution in a generic video title, in these cases, the good old text is unbeatable, so the blog was the chosen one. :)