Software Engineers

For this episode of the Software Engineers Podcast, I invited Woody Zuill. Woody is a software engineer with almost 40 years of experience working in the US and one of the originators of the concept of MobProgramming. Woody is currently a senior consultant. And he does a lot of education about agile, software development, and MobProgramming.Woody started his software engineering path as an autodidact, being his own customer. He was running a business. But one day got tempted to get a computer to do custom software that would help him in his daily work. His long career all started with a system he made for himself to track and record the checks at his shop.During our conversation, we discussed his long career and went through some basics of MobProgramming. He shared with me several tips and advice on things to avoid as well. 

When I prepared my first episode with Sebastiano Mandalà, he mentioned a name to me: Adam Martin. So I followed his advice! For this episode of the Software Engineers Podcast, I invited Adam Martin. Adam is a software engineer with 20+ years of experience working in the UK and inventor of the ECS paradigm. Adam is currently the CTO of [plural.ai](https://plural.ai/).Adam has a long career and his expertise is really more than just ECS. He is also an expert in Mobile apps engineering, mostly iOS. VR, AR, Shader programming, and also Artificial Intelligence are in his skillset. During our conversation, we discussed his career with a focus on his journey with ECS. It was fascinating to have the point of view of the inventor of the paradigm. And his point of view was interestingly different from Sebastiano's. 

For this episode of Software Engineers, I invited Maximiliano Contieri, Hashnode ambassador, and software engineer with 25 years of experience working in Argentina.You likely know Maximiliano from his well-known series about Code Smells on Hashnode or Twitter. Or perhaps you read his productivity tips on his blog: 16 Simple Tips to Boost Your Productivity x10.It was a lot of fun to chat with Maximiliano. We went through his long career. We discussed computer science. Maximiliano gave us his take on what is the main problem in software engineering (listen to the podcast to know what it is ^^). And ended up discussing a lot about AI, singularity, and Fermi's paradox.Maximiliano also shared his experience teaching at the university. And obviously, I couldn't ask him about blogging and the reasons which brought him to start in the first place.

In this episode, I discussed with Sean Austin. Sean is the VP of Engineering of Super Evil Megacorp, a AAA mobile-first indie game studio based in San Mateo, California. Sean was not destined to be in computer science at first. He originally wanted to pursue a career in physics, and willing to be a funny physics high-school teacher. But in our discussion, he explained what made him change his mind. Spoiler: it includes video games😉.We also go through his role and responsibilities at Super Evil Megacorp. "Being the VP of Engineering is about creating the best home for engineering talent," explained Sean. A role that is not tech-oriented, but people-oriented.Super Evil Megacorp is using a custom game engine named E.V.I.L. engine. I was also curious to ask him questions about the origin and reasons for such a choice. In short, we also talked about several others subjects like transition through COVID-19, managing remote teams, parenting and video games, etc.But enough said, listen to the episode now!

In this episode, I discussed with Sebastiano Mandalà. Sebastiano is the CTO of Freejam, an indie game developer based in the UK. He is also the author of Svelto.ECS, an ECS framework for C#.With his 20+ years of experience in game dev, Sebastiano has had quite an interesting journey. Yet, in the episode, we focused on what brought him into ECS (Entity Component System). Up to the point of doing his own framework. He goes with us through his train of thoughts that he also documented on his blog (http://www.sebaslab.com/). Starting from the SOLID principle to dependency injection and inversion of control. ECS appeared then to him as the solution he was looking for.He also explained that ECS is not a problem with UI. MVC is somehow ECS. The Models are the Components. The Views are the Entities. And the Controllers are the Systems. He also defends the idea that ECS is not a pattern, an optimization tool, or either a framework. But a paradigm like object-oriented programming is! But enough said, listen to the episode now!