21 Jul 2025 #misc
Yesterday, I revisited an Asian restaurant I hadn’t been to in years.
It’s a family business in a neighborhood I used to live in. It’s still run by the same Chinese couple. And interestingly, their level of conversational Spanish is rather intermediate. Still the same as when I met them. Probably an A2, if you’re familiar with language proficiency levels.
But they know enough Spanish to explain what’s in every dish, take your order, and take your payment. And that’s all they need.
Their Spanish may be basic, but it’s enough to meet their daily needs. Do they speak Spanish? Absolutely. Maybe not about politics, philosophy, or the meaning of life.
Too often we think fluency is about attending a language institute and getting straight As on an exam. But fluency isn’t about perfection.
Fluency is about connection and communication. It’s about knowing the right words for the right moment. And the Chinese couple running the restaurant are completely fluent.
Maybe you’re not opening a restaurant, but here’s how I’d learn a language for work from scratch and 10 hacks I’ve used to learn foreign languages faster.
20 Jul 2025 #writing
You can smell AI-generated content from miles away.
You can feel it. It’s the opening lines, the weird word choice.
- “Delve”
- “Ever-evolving”
- “In our fast-paced world…”
You can’t fight against it.
Recently, I learned how to stand out from AI while listening to James Altucher’s podcast. I forgot to take notes, but he said something like this,
To stand out from AI, we have to live an interesting life.
AI only remixes content it was trained on. AI can’t beat an authentic voice with impactful stories. We have to live our stories and pour them into our writing.
My writing resonated more once I started sharing personal stories. They turned my writing from crickets to likes. So tell stories only you can tell. That’s how you truly stand out from the noise.
19 Jul 2025 #productivity
We think of guns, car chases, and James Bond when talking about spies.
Productivity rarely comes to mind. But real espionage, as shown in TV shows like The Agency or Lioness, is full of chaos, multitasking, and shifting priorities.
Thanks to Mr. YouTube algorithm, I stumbled upon an interview with a former American spy:
He answers a ton of questions about espionage and psychology. But here are three battle-tested lessons about productivity I learned:
#1. We all have to balance the same three resources. Energy, money, and time. Two of them are limited. The other one, not so much. That’s why we should optimize for energy and time.
#2. Task saturation is when you have more tasks than you can comfortably handle. When that happens, you become so overwhelmed, you stop thinking rationally. Think of how many tasks you can handle at the same time and subtract two. That’s your sweet spot.
#3. When you’re task saturated, always tackle the task you can finish the fastest. And then, the next fastest one and so on. That gives you a sense of progress and momentum.
With those three lessons, you’re ready to get things done like a real spy. Don’t forget the cool gadgets and masks from Mission Impossible.
18 Jul 2025 #mondaylinks
Hey, there.
Here are 4 links I thought were worth sharing this week:
#1. Here’s how to sell yourself (3min). It distills the tactics from the guy who landed and balanced multiple startup jobs at the same time. He must have done something right to land those jobs in the first place, right?
#2. Want to build software quickly? Here’s a guide on how to do it (12min).
#3. When I hear “ergonomic,” I think of chairs or keyboards. But what about repositories? Here’s how to make repos ergonomic too (14min). It starts with the README file.
#4. Like human languages, programming languages grow, evolve, and die. They borrow features from one another. Here are some of the already dead but influential programming languages (20min). I used one of those in high school.
And in case you missed it, I wrote on my blog about two tiny fixes to improve your communication at work (2min) and 10 pieces of tech we use before breakfast without noticing them (3min).
(Bzzz…Radio voice) This email was brought to you by… Check my Gumroad store to access free and premium books and courses to level up your coding skills and grow your software engineering career.
See you next time,
Cesar
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17 Jul 2025 #misc
In many ways, we’re living in the best time in history.
Yes, some leaders are suspiciously looking at each other with a finger ready to press a red button. But, centuries ago, people died from diseases we treat today with pills we can freely buy at any grocery store.
Tech has advanced so much that we barely notice how many gadgets and breakthroughs we use before breakfast. I’ll be counting them as we go.
Waking up
At 7:00 AM, your smartphone (#1) rings to wake you up.
You don’t use an alarm clock anymore. A few hours before that, your AC (#2) automatically turned off after regulating your room’s temperature. Or maybe you have a fan, but I’m still counting #2.
After waking up, you didn’t stop to notice you have electricity (#3) at home and a comfy mattress (#4). That used to be a privilege reserved for kings.
In the bathroom
After waking up, without running away from hungry lions, you walk to your bathroom.
You use the faucet and brush your teeth with clean water (#5). You do your “business” in a toilet (#6), using paper.
Romans used, I mean shared, a sponge-tipped stick in public bathrooms. “Augustus, are you done with the sponge? It’s my time!” Soooo disgusting. Thanks, Marcus Aurelius for all your wisdom. But I don’t want to live in your time.
And when you’re done, one button press. Poof, like magic, your “business” disappears. We’ve built complex plumbing to get rid of it (#7), that we don’t even care what happens after pressing that button.
In the kitchen
A glass of water first thing after waking up?
A company has collected, purified, and distributed water from who knows where to bring it to your home (#8). We’ve perfected engineering and chemistry to make that happen.
To really wake up, a cup of coffee, right? You use a coffee machine (#9). Coffee beans grown in Latin America likely traveled to Switzerland to become capsules for your machine.
Not into coffee? Sure. What about some tea? A water heater! Or a fresh orange juice? You have a juice maker for that.
What about some eggs and toast with that coffee? You open your fridge (#10), then pull out your toaster from the counter (#11), and use your stove.
And just to finish your morning routine, what about some vitamins and supplements? Packed with calcium, magnesium, zinc, and more, everything your body needs in one pill (#12).
And there’s a whole lot of physics, electronics, engineering, global shipping, medicine, chemistry… just for breakfast. And we’re not even dreaming about the future with robotics, automation, and AI. We’re already in the future. It’s here
OK, I told you about 10 pieces of tech, but I ended up counting 12. There’s probably more I forgot to count.