About

I’m Cesar Aguirre. I’m a software engineer, lifelong learner, language enthusiast, and avid reader.

What I do

I’m an independent software engineer based in Colombia (not Columbia) with more than 10 years of experience (I stopped counting!).

I work remotely as a backend engineer and digital writer. I specialize in building APIs and backend code with .NET technologies. Mainly C#, ASP.NET Core, and SQL Server these days.

What I’ve done

I’ve worked in public services, electronic invoicing, and reservation management as a full-time employee and independent contractor.

Long time ago in a galaxy far away, I updated an invoicing platform to meet new government regulations, so users could keep working with minimal breaking changes.

What I write about

In 20218, I started blogging to share my learning as a software engineer. Coding tricks, tutorials, bugs I solved…

But over the years, this blog has become my own time capsule where I share lessons, stories, books, and anything I find interesting.

To recover from burnout, in November 1st, 2024, I started writing daily. I haven’t stopped since then.

All the words here are written by me. A human, not by AI. For coding? That’s a different story.

Fun facts

I’m a cat owner, vim user, plain-text lover, and Zettelkasten practitioner.

In my free time, I like to read books (on paper) and learn foreign languages. Currently, I’m learning Brazilian Portuguese. (Oi, gente! Tudo bem?)

Start here

If you don’t know where to start reading, here are some of my most popular posts:

Career

• 9 Subjects I’ve Changed My Mind About as a Software Engineer
• 10 Ways to Stand Out at Work—Other than Work Hard
• 10 Life-Changing Lessons I Learned the Hard Way—from the Worst Moment of My Career

Coding

• 5 Lessons from My Team’s Architect That Helped Me Become a Senior Developer
• 12 Hard Truths About Coding I Learned the Hard Way After 10 Years
• Three Tips to Read Code More Effectively

AI

• What Coders Could Offer Instead of Writing Lines of Code If AI Takes Over
• A Quick Recovery Guide for AI-Dependent Coders
• The Numbers That Deflate the AI Hype About Replacing Coders—and Ease FOMO

Books

• Six Proven Principles to Learn Any Skill Faster (Without Spending 10,000 Hours)
• Don’t Write the Next Atomic Habits. Write Mini-Books
• 8 Reading Habits I Learned from Ryan Holiday, the Stoic Book Master

Self growth

• 7 Surprisingly Simple Ideas That Changed My Life (And Could Change Yours Too)
• Two Years Ago, I Was Sick and Burned Out. But This Powerful Quote Changed It All

Productivity

• I’ve Replaced My Second Brain With a Simpler Method
• 5 Lessons I Learned from a World-Class Peak Performance Expert

Starting out or already on the coding journey? Join my free 7-day email course and refactor your coding career–I distill 10+ years of career lessons into 7 short emails.

Thanks for reading!