A short story about it

My first approach to computers was when I was six years old, someone introduced me to The Prince of Persia and I was instantly hooked. From that moment on, every time I was near a computer, I took advantage of the situation and started messing with things, modifying stuff, playing with files, customizing everything(and almost every time, the owners of those PCs complained about it :P), and so on.

Later on, by cosmic chance, someone gave me a PC as a gift, and the party got started. First getting my hands on different software(5¼” diskettes FTW!), trying out everything, and then I moved to disassembling and assembling the computer again, several times(most of them failed :P). It was a really great game for me, and then, when I was finishing primary school, my best friend’s brother gave me a programming book with the following words coming out of his mouth: now the game will get really interesting for you. It was a Pascal programming book. The game got interesting indeed.

And ever since then I’ve spent all my high school learning how to be a developer(and having several summer jobs thanks to that!). I went from Pascal to Basic, Visual Basic, Delphi, C and even some assembler in the middle. And by the time I was finishing high school, I became obsessed with web technologies(by that time, PHP4 was in all its glory). Then I got my first real job.

What I learnt

Since I started working I learnt lots of different skills, technologies, and even languages(I’m currently learning Dutch and French, and before that I learnt Portuguese). I’ve worked on different companies and as a freelancer, so I’ve managed to achieve an interesting list:

As a developer

I’ve attained strong developing skills in PHP, HTML, JS, CSS, Python, Bash and C++ For databases: MySQL, Oracle, MSSQL and PostgreSQL. I’ve also developed strong skills with content management platform systems like Drupal.

As a software architect and technical leader

In the past five or six years, I’ve developed a solid knowledge on how to lead small and big teams using agile methodologies. Also I am big lover of code reviews and re-factoring :D

Abstracting the complexity of a system, designing and developing a project’s architectural foundation, making the project capacity plan, keeping control over the architecture life cycle, support to the development team, supporting client and business activities, and so on.

As a sysAdmin

I have a strong solid knowledge on the following areas: LAMP servers and all the related infrastructure, managing extensive git/svn repositories, improving productivity by designing(or re-designing) and implementing internal continuous integration processes(jenkins, Acquia network administration, Amazon network administration, etc).

Furthermore

Feel free to visit my complete LinkedIn profile page for full details on all my technical and management skills.