Meet the Writer: HackerNoon's Contributor João Esperancinha, Software Engineer

So, let’s start! Tell us a bit about yourself. For example, name, profession, and personal interests.

I’m João, and I have been a Software Engineer for more than 10 years now. I am technically a Software and Telecom engineer, but most part I have only been doing software engineering professionally. There are many things I love to do, and that, of course, includes making Tech videos and writing blog posts and articles, and maintaining my website. Outside work and outside Tech, I am someone very curious about biology, which is why I like to try to maintain a garden where I grow things like blueberry bushes, honeysuckles, and gooseberry bushes, and I also love photography. I mostly enjoy photographing nature, cities, and things with lights. Further, I also like to enjoy my time doing stuff related to art, for example, video, photo editing, and style editing. Outside of all of this, I also enjoy music, series, films, traveling, cooking, and, from time to time, the occasional electronics project.

Interesting! What was your latest Hackernoon Top story about?

My latest Hackernoon Top story was the one I did about Kuma, which is about a way to create Meshes using Kuma-Meshes, where we can have a much more granular control over the data flow within our own network, which, amongst other things, can protect an organization against internal bad actors.

Do you usually write on similar topics? If not, what do you usually write about?

A the moment I exclusively write about Tech, although I can form time to time relate those posts with other kind of topics like opinionated arguments or even politics when they have the potential to influence tech. It can also be that I can write about how some particular tech stacks may influence our approach to tech or even society and environment. But the main focus is always tech.

Great! What is your usual writing routine like (if you have one?)

I do not have a specific writing routine, although I am writing a lot more these days.

Being a writer in tech can be a challenge. It’s not often our main role, but an addition to another one. What is the biggest challenge you have when it comes to writing?

My biggest challenge in writing is creating a functional example as fast as possible. Creating a story, implementing needed elements, making them run, creating tests for it, creating databases or any other persistence mechanisms for it, and trying to guarantee as much as possible that people can use the examples without walking against errors or faults is usually a very energy-intensive work. Therefore, it can take longer than desired.

What is the next thing you hope to achieve in your career?

I want to be as successful as possible with my own effort and work, and I want to share my experiences and knowledge with other colleagues in the world of software engineering. I don’t know if it eventually can become a full-time job, but if it does, it will probably be the next thing that I would love to achieve.

Wow, that’s admirable. Now, something more casual: What is your guilty pleasure of choice?

Listening to Madonna’s Ray of Light album.

Do you have a non-tech-related hobby? If yes, what is it?

Yes! I love to take photos of wildlife. I especially love making macro photos of leaves, insects, and flowers, as well as minerals, rocks, glass, metals, and anything that looks outstanding in a macro photo.

What can the Hacker Noon community expect to read from you next?

I usually write more about topics related to the Kotlin programming language; however, having said that I am finding it more and more interesting to write about security and operations from the DevSecOps area as I did in my article about Kuma. I think we can expect to read more about the SecOps area in my next articles, but I will still write about Dev.

What’s your opinion on HackerNoon as a platform for writers?

I think HackerNoon is a unique platform for writers to share knowledge about Technology because it is very recognizable, and a lot is automatically done for us like, for example, in this last article when it comes to translating my Kuma article in multiple languages. That was a very nice surprise to see. All in all, I think HackerNoon really appeals to Software programmers, Engineers, Developers, and even Businesses and so I’m very happy to keep writing for HackerNoon.

Thanks for taking time to join our “Meet the writer” series. It was a pleasure. Do you have any closing words?

Yes, thank you for giving me this great interview. I really appreciate the boost given to my article. I hope to be able to keep writing for HackerNoon for as long as possible. It is a pleasure to do so. Thanks again for the incredible support and for being there.