Prologue

A couple of years ago I found a job as a PHP + JavaScript developer in a small company in Geneva, Switzerland. I remember going to their offices two or three times, and having several interviews with various people there; one of them was the lead PHP developer of the company, the other being the CEO, a relatively well-known person in the tech area in Geneva; both shall remain nameless. The last interview I had was with the CTO, who would be my direct boss, as I was told.

They finally chose me, and very happily I signed the contract. I handed my resignation for my current job at the time, but had a couple of months of work to do before leaving (this is usual practice in Switzerland, one that I despise deeply, but that you are legally forced to follow). All in all, three months passed between me signing the contract and the first day of my new job.

The First Day

So one day, I headed to Geneva to start my new job. I arrive at around 9am to the address where the interviews had taken place, and, oh surprise… there was nothing. Stay with me: there was nothing. Not a sign in the wall indicating that the company used to be there, not a single desk, not a phone plugged on the wall. Nothing.
Puzzled (to say the least), I asked the first person I met in the hallway about the company, and she told me that they had left a couple of months ago. I asked if she knew where they went, but she told me that she did not.

I was really, really worried by now. Had I signed a contract with some kind of fake company that had just left the country to the Bahamas or Luxemburg? I called their phone number. The automated voice at the other end told me that the number was not in service.

Oh dear.

After what must have been like 60 minutes of going back and forth in the hallways asking for some kind of information about the company, one guy told me that they had moved not far from there. Finally a clue! He even gave me an address, so I left as quickly as I could. I was one hour late to my new job; you do not do that in Switzerland.

On my way, I could not help thinking things like, “why wouldn’t they call me to tell me that they moved to a new place? What’s going on?”

So around 1030am I arrived to this new address, got into the building, and checked in at a reception desk that was standing there. I asked the names of the people that had interviewed me. The guy told me that nobody with that name worked there. Then I asked, “I’m looking for the company such and such”, and he told me that no, this was a private bank (there are lots of them in Geneva), so I must have been given the wrong address.

Bummer. Back to step one.

The guy, nevertheless, told me one interesting thing; in the warehouses behind the bank there was this new “startup center” with brand new offices, and the company might as well be there. I thanked the guy, and started investigating the area.

The word “investigating” is the correct one. It felt like being Columbo looking for a murderer.

Indeed, behind the bank there was a huge, new complex with many new offices and small companies popping up. The building was an old factory that the city of Geneva had bought a couple of years before, and where you could rent cheap office space. Perfect for startups. But in the main entrance, there was no sign of the one I was looking for.

It was almost 11am, and I was about to give up. My cell phone had not rang, nobody called from their office; my wife told me that nobody had called home either. If they were around, they really did not care about me.

Just when I was about to leave the building, I asked one guy cleaning the hallway about the company name. He told me that he had never heard about it, but that there was a huge sign near the entrance of the parking with company names, and that given that the building was fairly new, not all company names had been set up in every entrance of the building, so I might as well check that one out.

I left the building, went to the entrance of the parking, and finally! I saw the name of my new employer. Together with the indication of how to get there by foot: a 10 minute walk from where I was. I said to myself, well, what the heck. Let’s go.

When I crossed the door, I saw yet another reception desk, this time with a huge sign behind the receptionist with the name of the company. This was finally the good one. That was at around 1115am; I had been touring Geneva for over 2 hours looking for this company by now.

I tell the girl that I am starting today my new job, and she tells me that it was her first day too, so she did not know anyone, so she guided me to an office marked “Human Resources”, which looked quite appropriate for the occasion.

“Welcome to the company!”

The HR guy gets up from his desk, greets me and tells me that he started 2 weeks ago and that he did not know that I was starting that day, but that was OK, welcome to the company anyway! He guides me to the sector of the open space where the technical team works, and I finally see some familiar faces, together with some 30 people I had not seen three months ago.

The company had had an explosive growth in just 3 months.

Anyway, they point me to a crappy chair and table in the open space and they called that a “desk”, and I said, OK, let’s score some more points. Even better, the IT manager comes up to me and says “oh sorry, I don’t have a computer for you, I didn’t know you were coming today”.

I sit down, awkwardly, as everyone resumed their tasks in an awkward silence, a mix of “I don’t know anyone here” and “I hope it’s 5pm soon”. Probably one of the worst feelings I have had in a work environment in a while.

Meet the boss

30 minutes later (it was almost noon, and I was really starving by now), while I was sitting on my chair without having anything to do or anyone to talk to, a guy looking like a hawaiian surfer comes up to me and tells me that he was my boss. Which was strange, because he was not the CTO I mentioned earlier, but given that everything had changed so much, I was not surprised.

The surfer takes me to a meeting office, we sit down for what I think it is going to be my first work meeting, and he tells me that he has been appointed to this boss role last month, that they are dropping PHP altogether, and that they will be doing the new system using Java. The guy tells me that he knows that I despise Java (he read it on this very blog, actually) and that he does not like me not liking Java. But he cannot fire me, because he has not hired me, so my role is undefined and, as a matter of fact, I have nothing to do there.

It was 12am, and by now I know I will not be doing long in this company.

To make a long story short, a few days after that I went to the office of the CEO, I gave them my resignation letter, and they just told me, literally, “OK, bye”.

That was it.

Epilogue

After two years, I was told that the Java system was never finished. The company still exists but has completely changed its business model, and the CEO has left the country and moved his company with him.

I also learnt that the original PHP developer, one of the guys who interviewed me, the one who worked his ass off for 4 years building the only system that was actually bringing cash, was also being dismissed from the new team because he was not a Java guy. He was let go a couple of months after I left. Nobody cared that he actually knew how the original system worked, how the business worked, or that he gave 4 years of his work for a company that greeted him with another “OK, bye”.

My path to independence started that very day. Dealing with that kind of crap (of which I have many more nice anecdotes that I will write about very soon) is what tells me that I do not want to be an employee again. I prefer to starve rather than being treated like shit.

PS: you will not find the company name in my LinkedIn profile, for reasons that should be obvious by now.

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I’ll watch you when you say
What you are
And when you blame
Everyone, you broken king

I’ll watch you change the frame
I’ll watch you
When you take your aim
At the sum of everything

You and your heart
Shouldn’t feel so far apart
You can’t choose what you take
Why you gotta break and
Make it feel so hard

You lay there in the street
Like broken glass
Reflecting pieces of the sun
You’re not the flame

You cut the people passing by
Because you know what you don’t like
It’s just so easy
It’s just so easy

You and your heart
Shouldn’t feel so far apart
You can’t choose
What you take
Why you gotta break and
Make it feel so hard
You and your heart
Shouldn’t feel so far apart
You can’t choose What you take
Why you gotta break and
Make it feel so hard

You draw so many lines in the sand
Lost the fingernails on your hands
How you gonna scratch any backs
Better hope the tide
Will take our lines away
Take all our lines and….

Hope the tide will take our lines a…
Hope the tide will take our lines away
Take all our lines away

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Anyway.

I used Pages during the flight to keep track of all those insomniac, bilingual tweets, while the plane was a going through the Atlantic and Canada towards San Francisco. Some are about the flight itself, others about the Argentine film “El Secreto de sus Ojos”, and finally some about the Football World Cup. Project yourself in the situation, and enjoy the rants. I certainly did :)

During and about the flight

• The iPad is the perfect onboard entertainment system. Pages as an offline Twitter client, Kindle and iBooks as ebook readers, some movies, and lots of music. 57% battery after 12 hours.
• As the stewards would say: “brace, brace”; lots of tweets coming.
• Outlook is a city in Saskatchewan, not far from Saskatoon and Moose Jaw. After this revelation to remember the next time you play Trivial Pursuit, you can resume your normal activities.
• Saskatoon officially gets the 2010 akosma award for the best city name ever.
• As you could imagine, the only interesting thing in this inflight entertainment thingy is the 3D map indicating our current position. #fascinating #boring
• I forgot to mention that my seat’s sound system is broken. I could watch any movie I want but my lip reading skills are not *that* good.
• The names of the cities in northern Canada are just amazing. Can’t remember any of them tho. Are they Innuit names?
• Our vision of the world is as distorted as a map of Novaja Zemlya in Mercator projection after the explosion of the Tsar bomba.
• Why do they still print the “smoke” section in boarding passes? Is there any airline out there still offering smoking seats?
• Given that most airplane tickets are electronic, why aren’t boarding passes? #iphoneappidea
• Let’s calculate the CO2 emissions caused by airlines still printing the word “smoke” in boarding passes. No, let’s better not.
• The keyboard of the iPad has this character: ₩ (tap and hold the dollar sign). What currency is it? Korea’s won? If Korea won, then the pun is intended.
• On the plane with @mediaatelier and @dcondrau, probably even more Swiss devs, but without wifi and Twitter, difficult to know.
• There were fewer devs using Xcode on this Swiss flight than in last year’s Lufthansa flight. I will leave the elaboration of any conclusion thereof to my dear followers.
• Why do flight attendants akways decide to serve beverages at precisely the same moment when planes go through turbulences? #complot #midwest #twister
• Now I understand why Swiss is Lufthansa’s cash cow: pricier tickets and crappier service. Only selling point: the nonstop ZRH -> SFO flight. #swissairwherearethou
• I remember when they added phones to Swissair airplanes, back in 1996; calls used to cost 10 dollars per minute. Now, in 2010, in Swiss… they cost the same. #WTF
• In the airport of Santa Cruz de la Sierra (Bolivia) there was free, fast, open wifi in 2006. Most airports in the northern hemisphere, in 2010, charge a lot for a crappy connection. #WTF
• And still, no wifi in planes. #WTF
• No, I haven’t been involved in Nazi activities during from 1933 to 1945. Thanks for asking. #visawaiver
• Swiss people not traveling often outside of Switzerland are easy to spot. I let you imagine the rest of this tweet.
• The Swiss version of Homer Simpson is sitting beside me, and is kinda fascinated with my iPad. Yeah, I’m talking about you, moron.
• Oh no my dear Homer, the armrest between us is mine for the rest of the flight. See? I don’t push *my* elbow on *your* side. Wasn’t *that* hard, now was it?
• The “Skytrain” in ZRH airport, is a subway, actually. You can hear yodel and cows and other Swiss sounds inside while you go from terminal to terminal. #typisch
• Whoever said that the iPad is a consumption-only device should have stop consuming some substances before writing nonsense.

Sobre la pelicula “El Secreto de sus Ojos”

• El otro día fui a ver “El Secreto de sus Ojos” con Clau, y me quedaron, obviamente, muchas cosas picando, pensaturrias.
• Me imagino la Argentina de mis padres como un lugar con una dosis mayor de inocencia de la actual. Debe haber haber sido un lindo lugar.
• Vivir en la Argentina de los 80 no estuvo mal. Aparte de las hiperinflaciones y crisis crónicas, yo tengo lindos recuerdos de aquella época.

Sobre el mundial

• Si Drogba se fracturo y quedo afuera del mundial, entonces se queda con las Ghana. Y el resto del tweet es superfluo. #mundial
• Si te fracbturas, necesitas una drogba para conbtener el dbolor. #mundial
• Primero Beckham, después Rooney, ahora Drogba… que otros jugadores se quedaron afuera? #mundial
• Atacante norcoreano inscripto como arquero… te imaginas? El técnico lo tendría que probar al arco, por ahí después se lo recordaría como el Higuita coreano. #escorpión #taekwondo #mundial
• El conocido árbitro paraguayo Carlos Amarilla no participará en el mundial. Tampoco asistirán el reconocido juez de línea francés Marcel Orsay ni el legendario hincha de Camerún. #burumbumbúm #mundial
• Burumbumberia, burumbumberia, yo soy el hincha, de Nigeria. #mundial
• Burumbumbana, burumbumbana, yo soy el hincha, de Ghana. #mundial
• Burumbumbafrica, burumbumbumbafrica, yo soy el hincha, de Sudafrica. #mundial
• Burumbumbar, burumbumbar, yo soy el hincha, de Madagascar (las hinchadas de Zanzibar y Escobar cantan similares canciones) #mundial
• Burumbumbique, burumbumbique, yo soy el hincha, de Mozambique. #mundial
• Burumbumipto, burumbumipto, yo soy el hincha, de ………………. (enviar respuesta correcta en un reply) #mundial
• Burumbumbina, burumbumbina, yo soy el hincha, de Argentina (el que diga “efedrina” es boleta). #mundial
• Burumbumbal, burumbumbal, yo soy el hincha, de Codesal (cantito alemán) #mundial
• Burumbumbola, burumbumbola, yo soy el hincha, de Angola. #mundial
• Burumbumbasta, burumbasta, yo creo… que ya basta.
• El otro día dieron en la TV Suiza (en italiano) la película de Kusturica sobre Maradona. Muy buena.

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Siento quenas que en el viento huyen
trayendo amores y silencios de las peñas
que encierran el sol en su corazón.
Entre airampos de luna
samponias que en el viento huyen
en viaje buscando el cielo un cóndor va
como mi ser resucitará buscando la luz.

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Agua, cayendo del cielo
agua, con furia y sin freno,
lava todos mis recuerdos,
dame en tus hojas la bendición.
Guerras, amores y juegos
fuegos, relámpagos, truenos
barcos, montañas y sueños
todo descansa en tu corazón.

Era clara, era vida,
de mis manos se escurría.
Me besaba, me envolvía,
pero siempre agua seguía.
Amanecer, desnuda en tu ritual,
y así te encuentro, serena siempre.
Era clara, era vida,
de mis manos se escurría.

Agua, ya sabemos cómo esto es.
Agua, hay uno y si hay dos, no hay dos sin tres.

Agua, puede estar más fría y dura que vos,
Agua, puede deshacerse en ardiente vapor.
Agua, dame, dame, dame, dame un poco de tu paz
Agua, que mi confusión es grande y así ya no puedo más.

Ui ui uh, ui ui uh,
Agua, la tierra es tierra de color azul.

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To put it elegantly, traveling by plane is a pain in the neck. In the 90′s it wasn’t better, but at least the Twin Towers were still standing in their place and there wasn’t a new “terrorist threat” every year or so, making the life of the rest of the travelers an ongoing misery.

Taking a plane exposes you to a staggering amount of things that can go wrong, from the most complex to the most ridiculous. They keep on telling us that traveling is the most secure way to travel, but they say nothing about the ever smaller and more uncomfortable seats, about the shitty food they keep on serving and the increasing number of destinations they keep on sending our luggage, more often than not exactly the opposite one we are going to. Without mentioning the amount of cancelled flights without warning, the non-guaranteed connections, the unbelievably ridiculous schemes of ticket pricing (why a return ticket is cheaper than a one-way is beyond me) and the oh so many other things that make air travel an utterly miserable experience.

Oh, but it is the most secure way of traveling. Yeah, right.

Disclaimer: I’ve been a Swissair employee in the 90′s, so I know a bit of how an airline can go every year a bit worse, until it disappears completely from the face of Earth.

So now the ashes of Iceland have grounded the planes of a whole continent, generating losses of around 300 million dollars per day. Ups (and, by the way, what an irony and a colorful way Iceland has found to return Britain the favor of an incredible economic disaster, of which it was the biggest victim but not the most important contributor… I do think nature has a sense of irony after all.)

What I find interesting is that, if the ashes keep on clearing the sky from those shitty winged artifacts filled with unhappy travelers, we will have a chance to slow down, and we might as well have a chance to start enjoying traveling again. And by that I mean having the time to take a long distance train, and even better, to ditch those bad imitations of birds with nicer long distance, transatlantic boats taking 10 days to take us over the oceans.

Imagine boarding in Genova or Hamburg, Le Havre or Cadiz, and taking your time to go through the Atlantic again. Let’s be clear, this is not 1920; with email, Skype or iChat you won’t miss much in terms of meetings or anything, but you’ll get to New York or Boston without jet lag, relaxed, sipping a margarita on the main bridge while waving to the people on the shore.

I would enjoy it for sure. And if the Eyjafjallajökull (somebody please tell me how to pronounce this) keeps on spitting ashes, at least until the Jet Stream cleans up the stratosphere a bit over the northern Atlantic, we won’t have any other option, anyway.

In the meantime, let’s relax and enjoy the first spring with a really, really blue sky, without airplanes or long white smoke trails, in a long, long time.

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te fuiste durante la mañana del 15 de marzo del 2010.

seguramente la noche anterior cenaste, miraste la television, tomaste tus medicamentos, despues te acostaste mirando la foto de tu hermano charles, y te quedaste dormida.

te quedaste dormida, mama, sin dolor.

creo que fue la mejor muerte que a uno le puede tocar. y cuando miro para atras, y veo el kilometraje que tenias, creo que fue la mejor. mucho dolor hubo, mucho.

tu cara tenia paz, no se como describirlo. cuando te vimos estabas tranquila, tenias incluso ese guiño en el ojo izquierdo que tenias cuando dormias. te fuiste soñando, probablemente con tu hermano charles, con tu perra brigitte, tal vez la abuela herta estaba ahi. quizas tu viejo, buscando un perdon que solo alla arriba se puede obtener. por ahi estara d’agosto, rini, walter, el tata kazimierz tambien. incluso la negra sosa, que canto en tu honor durante la ceremonia.

claudia te maquillo, y yo puse entre tus manos un crucifijo. tu fe te ayudo a dejar este mundo en paz. tambien puse entre tus manos cartitas y dibujos que te hice cuando era nene. todo eso se fue con vos. tenias tu pulover preferido, el negro y rojo, te quedaba bien.

aca quedo el dolor. como siempre, los que la pasamos peor en estas situaciones son los que nos quedamos. el viejo estaba destrozado. el te queria mucho, a pesar de los años y de la distancia.

rezamos mucho, y no solo aqui en suiza. hubo rezos para vos en argentina, bolivia, inglaterra, uruguay, incluso en suecia. la gente se movilizo. vos ya lo sabes, quizas; el mundo es un poco mas triste desde que te fuiste. pero si la oracion sirve, entonces quiere decir que no te fuiste sola, sino acompañada.

yo, al menos, veo un mundo con otro color, con otro dolor. no se como explicarlo, pero las cosas tienen otro sabor, otra textura. no es mas gris, no es mas colorido, es simplemente diferente. paradojicamente, yo tambien estoy mas en paz.

no fui un hijo perfecto, vieja, pero siempre quise que seas feliz.

es lo que te susurre al oido la ultima vez que te vimos, antes de la ceremonia, te dije que seas feliz. donde quiera que estes, quiero que dejes esa mochila de dolor y la reemplaces por una de color.

hiciste mucho para que yo sea quien soy hoy. ser hijo unico tiene un peso y una importancia particular, que determina muchas cosas en una personalidad. en el 96 yo quise ser yo mismo, y me escape de tu vida, lo cual, yo se, te dejo desamparada. despues, nunca mas fui el adri de la infancia, porque creci de golpe y a los cachetazos.

hice lo posible para no defraudarte, para ser alguien de bien.

encontre en la biblia la notita que me escribiste, supongo yo, alla por los ’80, y la lei en publico durante la ceremonia del jueves pasado. me dejaste un mensaje hermoso, que ire entendiendo poco a poco.

porque tuve que hacerme adulto para entenderte, algo que no se podia hacer mientras yo era nene. lo intente, pero eso me costo mi infancia. ahora estoy tratando de recuperar esa infancia perdida, con clau. ella tambien tuvo que crecer de golpe.

vos tambien, tuviste que crecer incluso mas rapidamente que nosotros. te robaron tu infancia y eso marco tu sensibilidad, te robo sueños y te dejo desamparada. tengo mucho odio por todo eso, no te lo merecias. eras buena persona.

a pesar de todo, sabiendo tu historia, no puedo sino admirar lo tuyo. porque despues de tu hospitalizacion del 2008, “te cayo una ficha,” y lograste encontrar el perdon y nos dimos cuenta todos de eso. estabas en paz con vos misma, estabas mas tranquila. el histerico era yo, y te pido perdon por este caracter volcanico mio.

pero vos lograste estar en paz. viniste a casa a pasar navidad, y fue una noche hermosa y fantastica. hicimos un ultimo viaje a schaffhousen, las viste a milena, renata, daniela y hella. fuiste cerrando capitulos, poco a poco, como un escritor que va terminando su libro.

vamos a llevar tus cenizas a argentina. siempre tuviste nostalgia de buenos aires. yo tambien. “deshauciado esta el que tiene que marchar / a vivir una cultura diferente.”

me viste en casa, con mi mujer, con trabajo, salud, e incluso con un titulo universitario. creo que viste que ya habia logrado cierto equilibrio, cosa rara en mi. eso te preocupaba mucho. creo que te tranquilizo ver que estoy mejor que nunca.

y te fuiste en paz, espero, dejando ese dolor, cambiandolo por color. yo tambien bese tu frente, por ultima vez, esperando que tu amanecer sea radiante, repleto de colores, como un arco iris.

te quiero mucho, vieja.

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• No es tan asi

dicho asi, parece una tremenda boludez, pero es asi: mirando las fachadas de cualquier edificio, cada ventana tiene un velador entre cada cortina. siempre. de esos veladores de mesa de luz, con su pantalla color crema, dando una luz acaramelada, melosa, calida, que contrasta con el frio exterior. en medio de la ventana, un velador, en cada ventana de cada edificio de cada avenida.

es una ciudad donde las calles estan cubiertas de piedritas.

dicho asi, parece otra tremenda boludez, pero ayuda a que la gente camine sin matarse entre los manchones de nieve, algunos a medio derretir y otros transformados en montañas de hielo y polvo. hay piedritas sueltas, que ayudan a que el zapato agarre mejor la calzada, a medio camino entre arena y canto rodado, en cada tramo de cada vereda de cada avenida.

es un pais raro.

los restoranes estan repletos a las 15 como en españa, pero vacios a las 19 como ni siquiera en suiza. la gente desayuna panceta con huevo y porotos con tomate, pero no hay gordos en las calles; es mas, son todos flacos de un metro noventa promedio. son tan rubios que a los albinos les dicen morochos. en los tranvias, las maquinas que te venden el boleto tienen un boton que dice “english” pero que igual te da las instrucciones en sueco. la gente es seca pero cordial, parece que te van a mandar a la mierda en cualquier momento; y cuando te ven con un mapa se paran y te preguntan si necesitas ayuda, con una gentileza que desmorona. pronuncian las “a” como “o”, y la “y” suena como una “u” francesa. y si es una “å” con redondelito es diferente de si es una “ä” con dieresis. hay locales de venta de “gudis” por todos lados, vendiendo golosinas a granel; agarrate una bolsa en la entrada y paga a la salida, al peso.

deci que no manejan por la izquierda, como los ingleses, eso ya seria mucho.

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Last year’s language was Go, and the books, well, here we go:

• Software Engineering: Barry W. Boehm’s Lifetime Contributions to Software Development, Management, and Research
• The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook: Building Applications with the iPhone SDK
• Beautiful Teams: Inspiring and Cautionary Tales from Veteran Team Leaders
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Software Engineering: Barry W. Boehm’s Lifetime Contributions to Software Development, Management, and Research

Barry Boehm is a name that might not strike a chord immediately, but if you work in the software field, it should. He has been working non-stop for the past 50 years (that’s right, 50), discussing all kind of subjects related to the practice of software engineering. This book is a compilation of his most well-known papers, with subjects ranging from project management to components, from iterative techniques to developer productivity. The guy has written about all of it, and when you realize how right he was, you wish you had read those papers earlier in your career.

The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook: Building Applications with the iPhone SDK

Erica Sadun is a legend in the iPhone software engineering field. Her involvement with the iPhone developer community from the very beginning (during the dark times of jailbroken iPhones) has increased since the release of the official iPhone SDK in March 2008. Her articles on Ars Technica or The Unofficial Apple Weblog are epic, and her book could not be other than a masterpiece. Make no mistake: this is not a book for beginners (and, by the way, the second edition has recently been published) but it is the perfect companion for all of us who spend a life in Xcode and the SDK. I hope she will continue providing more editions of this book, particularly now that the iPad has been announced, and will be released soon.

Beautiful Teams: Inspiring and Cautionary Tales from Veteran Team Leaders

O’Reilly has some very successful book series, like the “Head First” and the “Beautiful” ones. The latter, very similar in spirit and nature to the “At Work” series of books by Apress, provides a series of interviews to key industry players, in different fields, highlighting real-world experiences. This book takes this approach and brings an incredible series of war stories from organizations like IBM, Media Molecule or the NASA, told by Grady Booch, Tim O’Reilly, Cory Doctorow, Steve McConnell and, yes, even Barry Boehm. This book reinforced my belief that software is a social process, and I think that you will enjoy these stories about how many well-known products we use and love (or hate) every day have been brought to market, and how their teams struggled to stay together – or how they miserably failed.

Core Animation for Mac OS X and the iPhone: Creating Compelling Dynamic User Interfaces

The iPhone OS and Mac OS X both share a legacy of design, attention to detail and awesomeness that can be explained by the sole existence of a single set of APIs: Core Animation. This library allows developers to create stunning visual effects with great performance and with just a few lines of code. The rational use of animations is considered a huge usability win, bringing context awareness to users, helping them understand what’s going on their applications and providing feedback and a “real world” feel to software. Bill Dudney provides here a short yet complete introduction to the concepts behind Core Animation, both for the Mac OS X and iPhone OS; all in all a must have for all Cocoa and Cocoa Touch developers.

Pragmatic Version Control Using Git

I’ve been a happy Subversion user for years. I’ve kept svn repositories for my Master’s degree work, my personal documents and of course for most of my projects. However, the server-centric nature of Subversion always made me think twice before creating a repository, and not being able to browse repository contents without a specialized client was always a pain in the neck. Not to name the fact that branching in svn is harder than it should be IMHO. Git changed all of that. Creating repositories with Git is not only cheap, it’s easy and fast, and branching could not be easier. This book was the one that showed me that there was a better way, and now with my Github account, I can’t think of any other way to handle any kind of project. This book provided the initial knowledge to get started, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about Git.

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

Tim Ferriss is a strange kind of guy. He comes up with this book and tells you that you are working too much, that having a boss is killing you, and that you should be sipping margaritas in the Caribbean instead. And then he proceeds to show you how to do it. This book is interesting in many aspects, the first of which is the irreverent tone and the complete faith the guy has in his method. I could not agree with everything he said but I have to agree with the fact that he’s really convincing. Tim believes in what he says and the book is a really funny one, and I can’t deny that reading it helped me take the final decision to start my own company. So, in any case, beware! This book is dangerous :)

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