Microsoft Principal Software Engineering Manager Nick Cosentino Talks About His Writing Process

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

Hey there! My name is Nick Cosentino and I’m a Principal Software Engineering Manager at Microsoft. I have been programming for 20+ years and enjoy creating content around software engineering and C# over at my website and YouTube.

Interesting! What was your latest Hackernoon Top story about?

I most recently wrote about async void concerns with EventHandlers in C#. When mixing the async/await and the async void signature of these handlers, you can run into some tricky issues with exceptions. The article details a really simple solution for helping you avoid this and was based on some great feedback from this original article (which took an extremely different approach).

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

While not specifically around async/await and EventHandlers, I enjoy creating examples and tutorials on C# and the .Net ecosystem. If not specific code examples, I create content around software engineering practices to help others level up as software engineers. The videos that I create are on the same topics as well.

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

I try to ensure that I create at least one article per week that I can publish. This generally will have an associated video with it as well. I don’t have a much more detailed routine than that, except for that I try to use my Saturday and Sunday to ensure there is some focused time for writing.

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?

Writing content takes a lot more time than talking to a camera. Yes, videos have editing that goes into them, but I could speak about a topic for 5-20 minutes, which would take me multiple hours to type up. So I need to ensure I don’t skip out on sloppy material just to squeeze it in the time frame.

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

I manage several excellent teams at Microsoft that I am very proud of. My entire career, I have been so fortunate to work with amazing software engineers. I hope to continue down this path and take on more scope and impact.

One thing I never want to lose touch with as an engineering manager is my technical abilities. I write code all the time outside of work, and I want to ensure my team members know that they can come to me with questions on anything, including helping out with code.

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

Don’t leave cookies or brownies in the same room as me!

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

Bodybuilding and modified cars!

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

I’ll try to ensure that I have a good mix of beginner programming examples (because I want to help tear down the barrier for getting started with coding), but I will be mixing in more advanced topics that I am currently exploring as well. The more advanced topics take significantly more time, so they may be published slightly less frequently until I can improve my cadence.

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

HackerNoon has been extremely easy to work with and write on. The editor for creating posts is extremely simple and intuitive. Zero complaints from me, and I look forward to writing more here!

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

I would encourage every single person that has ever considered wanting to learn about programming to just get started making things. Pick a language. It doesn’t matter which one. Start trying to build things, even if they seem overly simple. Hands-on coding experience building things will teach you more than any course or tutorial ever will. The only way you can go wrong here is by not starting… so go build and then tell me all about it!!