About
Hello, I'm Andrea!
Nice to meet you, and thank you for being interested in who I am.
If you're curious, I'll give you a brief summary, it won't take long, my story is pretty common to many others :)
I was born and live in Italy, a country I adore despite its thousand pros and cons. I was lucky enough to live in Venice for a while - unforgettable!
I'm a software engineer, I studied programming (and more) both in high school and university, but in the end I decided that code would accompany me throughout my career, and it continues to do so.
I'm a videogame enthusiast, or rather, I was, since my kids occupy every other free moment of my day, but I love them all the same, I swear! Perhaps that's exactly why I started being curious about PCs since I was a child, and yes, I'm old enough to remember the sound of the modem when it was turned on.
I have an attraction to stories, of any kind and told through any medium. I'm firmly convinced that this is something that can significantly impact our development and is often underestimated. I could spend hours listening to grandparents telling their stories from when they were young - actually, if you have a grandparent you don't hear from often and don't have time for, give me their number, I'll gladly keep them company.
I'm also passionate about photography, especially documentary photography, for reasons similar to what I mentioned above regarding stories.
For now, I think that's all - I don't want to bore you further.
If you're curious about where I've worked, you can ask me for a connection on LinkedIn, I'll be happy to accept it.
What I Do
I started as a mobile developer, and I'm continuing as a mobile developer. This is because I'm quite a boring person and also because I find this role very satisfying. Working with Swift is a pleasure: the Apple documentation is well written, the impact of the code is immediately visible on screen, you can run complex logic in this kind of distributed system, and for many other reasons that I'd like to discuss if you ever text me.
- Languages
- Swift
- Kotlin
- Frameworks
- SwiftUI
- UIKit
- Jetpack Compose
- Development Environment
- Xcode
- Android Studio
- IntelliJ IDEA
- Version Control
- Git
- GitHub
- GitLab
- Dependencies
- Swift Package Manager
- Gradle
- Carthage
- CocoaPods
- Maven
- Networking
- URLSession
- Alamofire
- Retrofit
- OkHttp
- Testing
- XCTest
- JUnit
- Espresso
- Mockito
- Database
- Core Data
- Realm
- Room
- Analytics
- Sentry
- Firebase Analytics
- CI/CD
- Xcode Cloud
- Fastlane
- GitHub Actions
The Other Side of the API
A mobile app is only as good as the server behind it, and I got tired of waving at the backend from across the network. So I've been learning to build that side too: servers and clients in Go, scripts and small projects in Python, the Linux and Docker plumbing that keeps it running, and Grafana to see what's actually happening once it's live. Coding agents now write a good share of that code, so I'm learning to work with them, and to build a few of my own in Python.
- Backend
- Go
- Python
- HTTP Servers
- HTTP Clients
- Data
- SQL
- Infrastructure
- Linux
- Docker
- Observability
- Grafana
- Agentic Coding
- Coding agents
- AI agents in Python
Always Learning
I still study most mornings, so this list keeps growing. Here's what I've completed so far.
- Go
-
- Learn Go
- Learn HTTP Clients in Go
- Learn HTTP Servers in Go
- Learn CI/CD with GitHub Actions, Docker and Go
- Python
-
- Learn Python for Beginners
- Learn Object Oriented Programming in Python
- Learn Functional Programming in Python
- Build a BookBot in Python
- Build Asteroids using Python and Pygame
- Build an AI Agent in Python
- Foundations
-
- Learn Linux
- Learn Git
- Learn Docker
- Learn SQL
Certificates
Proof of the courses above, newest first. Click an image to view it full size.
My Philosophy
Saying yes has given me most of my best stories. Clicking "Accept all" on a coding agent's diff gave me one more: a long evening of detective work at a crime scene I technically co-authored.
Jokes aside, I really like software development; it's full of generous people ready to help, something I've never seen in any other job. Each software developer has their own experience molded by the product they're building, so you can become an expert in any field while implementing the details. What more could you want from a job!
Beyond Code
I have two small kids. I literally do not have time for anything else, really. As I said before, I'm quite a boring person, so I get up early in the morning to study programming before they get up and start their day. After work, I enjoy spending time with them, and believe me, it's the best part of the day. I can't ask for anything else. Ah, I quite forgot to mention this—I studied photography in my free time and do some practice. I've been a mentor for a local community of photographers and would love to practice more and more. It's like my second big passion!