Hi Friends,

Welcome to the first edition of my newsletter. Some of you subscribed after following me on Twitter. I am grateful you've trusted me to also send you this newsletter.

I am trying to figure out what I am doing exactly. It's the first time I'm sending a newsletter, and I still have to figure out many things. But I wanted a friendly and safe space to communicate with you without the 280-character limit.

Sometimes this newsletter will be short and sometimes longer, but I'll try to stick with weekly issues. I promise not to waste your time but feel free to unsubscribe whenever you are not interested. This newsletter is backed to an actual mail address, so you can reply to it if you want to give feedback or get in touch.

A Short Intro

My name is Fernando, and I'm an Italian software engineer living in Zurich (Switzerland) since 2015. I am an atypical software engineer because I have not been passionate about programming and technology from the beginning. I did classical studies in high school, and my initial aspiration was to be a journalist or a teacher.

But I was interested in computers and video games, so I decided to study Computer Science. I received my BSc in 2006 and my MSc in 2008 at the University of Florence. Once I graduated, I started collaborating as Computer Scientist with the University.

I focused most of my research on Computer Vision, Image Processing, and Machine Learning. At the end of this collaboration, I held a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering.

Despite my interest in teaching and research, I didn't believe enough in the possibility of an academic career and started looking into the software industry. My professional path as a Software engineer started at General Electric and has continued in other well-established companies such as Bombardier, ABB, and now Siemens.

Continuous learning has been the biggest motivator throughout my career. I became genuinely passionate about algorithms, distributed systems, and other software engineering areas. I love writing about those topics, and I'm happy to share my knowledge and learnings with other passionate people.

Indeed, the best method to test your understanding of a topic is to share it with someone else. Only through the exercise of explanation can you identify and fill gaps in your comprehension. So it's a win-win approach.

What to expect

Many of you subscribed because of my posts about algorithms, distributed systems, or software engineering. This is a tech newsletter, and most of the content will still be around those topics. In addition, I will either clarify or expand the content I already posted on social media or give a preview of the new content.

Moreover, I will provide more resources you can use to dig deeper. The web is a gold mine of great content, and I'll share the best resources I read every week or ideas I come across.

However, from time to time, I could keep a bit of space for talking about other topics or interesting facts happening in my life. I am not only a software engineer but a person with a life beyond that, and I don't want to thoroughly keep hidden this side. And who knows, something more personal I share could interest you anyway.

Why Polymathic engineer

You may wonder why I choose Polymathic engineer as a name for the newsletter. As a not native English speaker, I've met the term polymathic only by chance. Still, I immediately liked it. According to Wikipedia, a polymathic is a person having great learning in several fields and can use this knowledge to solve specific problems.

Clearly, I don't presume to be such a person. Still, every great and passionate software engineer should aspire to get close to this definition. Software engineering is a complex field with many different areas, and the more you get familiar with those, the more you'll be able to solve problems efficiently.

Thank you for reading.

- Fernando

P.S. you can reply directly to this email; it will get to me, and I will read it.