I'm Rafael, I am a technology leader, educator, and mentor with an extensive background in enterprise systems software and analytics: telco, mainframes, and configuration management.
I have recently completed five wonderful years as an educator in Australia's fascinating vocational education system. I was teaching and developing courses in advanced programming and analytics.
I started just in time to see a pre-LLM world and right through the rise of LLMs. The introduction of LLMs->GenAI (I think 'foundation model' is a misnomer, AI more so) was (is) among the most profound for education in general and programming education in particular.
It has been one of the most challenging riddles I have had to contend with and I feel proud about what I managed to achieve: mentoring emerging developers and data professional, codifying best practices, and deepening my expertise in applied AI and modern data analysis.
The pinned repositories mostly provide a sample of some of the work I did (at least the work that can be openly licensed) as well as some of the better resources I have found along the way.
While consulting and training is what pays the bills, particularly on Azure and Microsoft Fabric, I still love hands-on development.
- I think Python is insanely underrated (yes, you read that correctly!)
- GenAI is going to make foundational knowledge, critical thinking, and command line literacy more important than ever
- GenAI is a multiplier (and not a linear one at that): that means the value you can create by learning to code has increased
- That said, the impact of GenAI on development, while significant, is overrated (though my credit card bills beg to differ)
- The biggest challenge in learning to code is making nonsense interesting
- My favorite acronyms are: YAGNI, GIGO, and DRY
- Been dabbling in Rust for a year or so now, almost ready to join the cult
- Zed with vim mode - yes.