Hi, I'm Cesar, a Senior Software Engineer with 10+ years of experience.
In 2023, I got sick and burned out.
In 2024, I was laid off.
To recover, ...
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Hi Cesar! Congratulations on your book's first anniversary!
I'm also interested in writing books, as I have three book ideas floating around in my head. I actually wrote the latest one completely by accident, if that's even possible! So I guess we'll see if there's any demand for it.
Do you have any advice on publishing a book?
As for burnout, I try to deal with it in two ways: physical activity (renovating my house) and participating in coding competitions, just like I did yesterday!
Don't start writing a book by writing a book: Start by validating the ideas before they become the table of content, and by growing an audience.
My rule is to do something for my body, mind, and spirit every day :)
Hi Cesar! 👋🏻
I'm recovering from burnout now, and writing works for me too! Writing morning pages was a turning point that helped me get through it. I also started writing my own book along the way. I think I just needed to step away from the tech world for a bit and rest, so I could organize my thoughts and find my place in it again.
My question for you is: what does your writing process look like, especially when writing a book? Do you freestyle your first draft, or do you start with a plan and stick to it?
I struggle with perfectionism as well, so whenever I write anything, I have to fight the urge to go back immediately and rewrite it into an "ideal paragraph". Any tips for beginner authors on how to escape this trap?
I try to make each book an experiment. But for most of them, I start by validating ideas as posts, emails, or social media posts. The top performing ones will eventually become book chapters, and the ones with less performance become supporting ideas. Then I like to write my books backwards: starting from a title, subtitle, promise, a 1-line summary, Amazon sales page...
I wrote about my last book experiment here. Hope you find it inspiring.
I will pass on a tip I learned from Nicolas Cole, a digital writer I follow: don't worry too much about editing. Instead of thinking in terms of a post, think in terms of your entire "library" of content. Volume wins over perfection.
Ohh and maybe these days of AI slop, some typos and imperfect sentences are the sign of human-written content :P
Ahaha, yes! I noticed that now, whenever I see a typo or a clumsy sentence, I find it way more interesting and authentic than all the perfect yet generated content. At least I have a feeling there's a person behind it!!
Also, thank you for the tip! It feels like I should engrave "Volume wins over perfection" on my forehead 😅 I still fall into the trap of writing and editing at the same time to get perfect sentences, but it keeps me from actually writing.
Yes, a hard pill to swallow for me too :)
Try the "Most Dangerous Writing App," you'll get rid of that habit :P
Happy 1st anniversary! Honestly, writing and publishing an actual coding book is just ridiculously cool. Turning a tough period of burnout into a tangible resource that other developers can learn from is such a major achievement. Huge respect for pushing through and making it happen Cesar :)
Thanks Maame, just like the Ancient said, it's now what happens, but how we react to it.
Thanks for stopping by! Happy coding!
No p! Happy coding :)
You're obviously a brave writer! Asking for comments at the risk of receiving none! (Well, at least, that's what would happen to me if I ran an AMA...)
Here's my question: how to fight the writer solitude in the age of immediate satisfaction through AI?
That has happened to me :/
That's something I struggle with. Yes, writing can feel lonely. Sometimes it feels we're shouting to the void. To fight it, I like to write something to help one person, and most of the time, that's my past self...or my future self. The other day, I read that if we write something we like, we only need one person to read it: oneself.
Good point!
What stands out to me is that writing didn't just help you recover; it gave you a reason to keep creating when life had knocked you off course. Turning that experience into a book, and then building on it with more, is meaningful.
Sometimes the thing that helps us rebuild ourselves ends up becoming something that helps other people too.
Absolutely! Helping others helps us find meaning too. For me, it was a combination of writing and seeing my posts resonate with the dev.to community.
First of all, congratulations on your book's first anniversary! That's an amazing accomplishment, especially considering everything you went through to get there.
I love that writing became something that helped you through such a difficult time and eventually turned into something you could share with others. I've only been writing on DEV for a relatively short time, but I've found it incredibly rewarding. Sometimes just putting your thoughts and experiences into words can be more meaningful than you expect.
It's really inspiring to see how something that started as a way to help yourself grew into something that can help so many other developers. Congratulations again!
dev.to was key in my recovery, seeing my posts resonated with the community kept me writing.
Thanks for your kind words. Happy coding!
Validating book ideas as posts first is a practical way to avoid writing a whole book nobody wants. Which of the 30 lessons surprised you most by how strongly readers responded to it?
I was surprised when someone called me "the Street-Smart Coding guy" I started to use that line in my bio since then.
That label sounds like a useful filter as well as a compliment. Has it changed the topics you say yes to, or do you still let a post earn its place even if it does not fit the street-smart framing? I am curious where you draw that line now.
I haven't changed my subject much. I always try to educate or entertain with every post. What I've changed is that now I introduce any of my books as the helpful next step on every post.
Keeping the educate or entertain filter while adding the book as a next step sounds like a good balance. How do you decide when a post has earned that next step, and when would you leave it out so the post can stand on its own?
I challenge myself to make every post earn a next step.
which lesson from the 30 made the book?
Mmm I'm not sure I'm following your question...but my favorites are #15 (about async programming), #29 (about problem solving) and #30 (about getting fired) :)
which of the three gets quoted back most?
I haven't read or heard about any quotes, but the title resonates with a lot of people, that someone even called me "the Street-Smart Coding guy" so I stole it for my bio :)
the bio steal is the best part.
Writing technical deep dives forces you to confront the ugly production trade-offs we usually bypass under sprint pressure, like eating a 10ms tail-latency penalty just to avoid maintaining complex lock-free state machines. The real edge case with documenting architectures is that textbook patterns almost always disintegrate the moment bare-metal kernel contention and memory fragmentation hit at scale. How often did you have to scrap an "elegant" code example because you knew it would immediately fold under real production traffic?
Bohdan Hordii // bohdanhordii.dev
Not very often :/ I learned the hard way to favor clear over clever code, code anyone can modify (even juniors)
What do you do to mitigate burnout these days?
And do you feel like burnout is more about having too much to do and too little time or about feeling like you have no agency in your work? For me it's the latter I think.
I feel like I am due for another burnout soon 😅
Congrats on the book anniversary!
I make sure I do something for my body, mind, and spirit every day. No excuses! Sometimes that's weight lifting, writing, and a moment of silence
Recently, I learned about burnout (exhaustion) and boreout (being bored to death). For me it was the second one, feeling I was working on things I didn't care about. I was doing too little of the things that really mattered to me.
Happy first birthday to Street-Smart Coding! A question for the AMA: when you were coming back from the burnout and then the layoff, how did you tell "I need more rest" apart from "I need to start something"? Writing turned out to be the answer for you. Did you know that at the time, or only looking back?
At the peak of my burnout, I tried to negotiate a sick-leave, but my agency didn't allow it. And after the layoff, I couldn't find a job, so I chose the time between jobs as a sabbatical.
No. I only knew writing would take me somewhere else, but I didn't know where. Now that I connect the dots, that was something that gave me a sense of accomplishment and helped a lot to recover.
Calling the gap a sabbatical is a really practical move. Same months, but this way it's a stretch you chose. Makes sense that writing helped too, since it gave you something finished you could point to, which burnout and a stalled job hunt don't hand out much. Thanks for being this open about it.
Refreshing to see someone who is not blatantly using AI in his writing and explicitly asks to keep LLMs out of the comments as well.
Following you mate!
Writing feels too personal to me to outsource it to an LLM. It'd be like asking someone else to chew my food, just because it'd be faster :)
Thanks for following me and for stopping by! Happy coding!
Congrats on one year! Getting a book published is no small thing.
Thanks!
Nice to have you back Cesar!
To create a book from your unique knowledge is an achievement truly worth mentioning. It is an achievement for you, of course, but also if you can see people actually taking advantage of that knowledge.
I am and did kind of the same as you. After burnout from working full-time and being a founder on top of that, I went into working with my hands, building kayaks, paddling every day, honing my skills and teaching others. Pure therapy!
Being in the lucky position I could actually afford my life for a few years without working for money was of course not just a little help.
A few years later, last summer I went to Greenland and participated in the yearly kayaking championships! Many new friends and perspectives.
One caveat: HR people (and the IT industry in general) look for the top percentile but judge you age-wise like there is only a median and no outliers. When I was 21 I was the youngest (sound engineer) in my industry. Now, at 62, apparently no one believes I can still be smart enough to create real value. I am sorry to say: you better prepare for it.
Glad to hear I wasn't alone.
Sounds like an amazing time.
Thanks for the heads up. I hope I don't have to do interrviews or write CVs anymore :)