Welcome to Beyond the Loop!
Programming is the art of telling another human being what one wants the computer to do. - Donald Knuth
Beyond the Loop is a blog about taking the next leap into your programming career.
About bridging the gap between the beginner tutorials and the advanced articles. About developing the core skills and traits that mark a professional engineer.
If you have finished a beginner tutorial like CodeAcademy or a bootcamp like FlatIron, and are wondering where to go from here, I hope this blog can help you.
Who am I?
My name is Borja, and I’m passionate about becoming the best programmer I can be.
I’ve always loved programming. I even studied Computer Science at university. However, it wasn’t until I joined the industry and was fortunate enough to work with amazing, experienced professionals that I really felt like I became a mature engineer.
Since then, I’ve self-learned Rust by writing a GameBoy emulator, worked on a published scientific paper, and I’m currently doing my dream job of improving developer tooling @ Twitter.
I feel like like I spent the first 8 years of my career (a large chunk of college too!) repeating the same beginner tutorials over and over again, and suddenly meeting the right people allowed me to level up, to go from beginner to professional in a very short while.
This is all thanks to having found amazing mentors that helped me grow. I wish everybody could have the same opportunity.
Good mentors don’t teach you concepts about programming, good mentors teach you how to think about programming, how to focus on what matters, and how to implement better solutions, faster.
This blog is my attempt to capture some of that wisdom, to crystallize the lessons I’ve learned through mentorship and experience.
Sound Good?
If you’re a beginner eager to start thinking like a professional, I hope you find this blog useful. Read, comment, ask questions, keep practicing and ask more questions. I’ll do my best to help.
If you’re an experienced developer, please disagree with what I say. I’m only at the beginning of my own path, and always looking for advice and feedback. Email me at blorente (at) gmail.com.
Borja
I didn't invent any of this stuff. I got most of it from reading books and asking people that are smarter than me.
Check out the books that helped me, and the tools I use every day.