In the Mind of an Astrophysicist: Meet the Writer TheCap

This story is a part of Hacker Noon's Meet the Writer series of interviews. The series is intended for tech professionals contributing the most insightful Hacker Noon stories to share more about their writing habits, ideas, and professional background (and maybe a hobby or two).

If you too would like to start contributing to Hacker Noon, you can do so here.

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

I am Thecap, a Javascript developer looking to be the next astrophysicist who helps to develop a real future for the human race.

Interesting! What was your latest Hackernoon Top story about?

My last story was about the result of my three months of experience working as a developer for the Hackernoon army. We decided to create a functionality to allow the user to find articles within Hackernoon's database to learn anything about technology. To celebrate, we created a story about it.

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

I usually write a bunch of documentation about everything I coded. However, this was the first time I wrote documentation about my components that will have directly impact on the final user. That article is an excellent example of how you can create a high impact in a community by being part of a Startup, by delivering a feature and release it using all the company available resources.

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

My writing routine looks like this:

1. I start by researching the state of art.
2. Because I use to write about coding, the first thing I have to do is to code the piece of software I would like to share.
3. After the development time, I create the first draft of my story. Since I'm not an English native speaker, I use tools like Grammarly and Google Translator to help me fix my broken English :).
4. Finally, I read my article a couple of times, and I submitted the story to review.

Unfortunately, I don't have much time these days to keep up with my writing route. Since I decided to switch to Astrophysics, I had to transform the writing hours into reading hours, study sessions, and research hours. Most of the things I write are for the future of me. I promise to start sharing my knowledge as soon as I feel comfortable talking about space science.

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?

The biggest challenge is to find your way to communicate a message. It’s hard to define how do you want to be read. Some people prefer to be direct to the point, and others prefer to read more informal text. I’m still discovering how I want to be read. Within the following years, I hope to spread the word and generate valuable articles that could help somebody save some time in the future and create something useful for humanity.

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

I hope I can finally start working as an Astrophysicist and help to find a solution for our current environmental problems.

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

I would say coffee, ice cream, and pizza. I usually have headaches, and the coffee does not help with them (My neurologist recommendation). Plus, I'm trying to keep myself healthy, but vanilla ice cream and margarita pizza are delicious.

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

My non-tech-related hobbies are skateboarding and kickboxing. I am still nooby at skateboarding, but I enjoy my skate time and follow most skateboard competitions. And kickboxing is a fun way to release all your frustration.

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

I'll start to write about how software is helping humanity to discover how the actual universe works. I don't have a specific release date for the stories, but the first article needs to be ready within the next six months at the latest.

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

If you want to share your ideas, in my opinion, Hackernoon is the best place to do it. They will help you to promote your articles, an editor will review your text before the release, and you will learn a lot during the process.

Have fun, learn something new as soon as possible, and double-check your lifestyle to allow future humans to enjoy the world as you do.