Welcome! How was your 2024?

Hello there! Welcome to my new blog.

Here I will write whatever comes to mind, from technical computer-related stuff to personal thoughts and feelings about things I feel worth writing a blog post about.

2024 was the year I got my M.Sc. degree in computer engineering, the same year I decided to quit working as a freelancer.
You know, I really hated working with italian companies:

• code is ALWAYS horrible: every time I inherited the codebase from other developers my eyes would melt. NOBODY knows about IEEE 754 (a colleague and I had to hold a meeting about floating point arithmetic because nobody knew why you couldn't use floats for money). NOBODY knows about code standards. I could go on for hours;
• products SUCK: everything is management/insurance-related software. There is literally NOTHING else;
• development teams are SMALL: I have seen products that generate MILLIONS of euros in revenue being managed by THREE PEOPLE THAT DID ALL THE WORK. Working hours are generally in the range of "I don't care, just get it done";
• requirements are FUZZY and change over DAYS;
• NOBODY takes the responsibility for ANYTHING.

As you can probably tell, all of this was very stressful, and I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking this way.

For these reasons and many more, such as my university having outdated courses and other things, there was a point last year, between February and April, where I was really struggling enjoying university and work, but something clicked when I started working on my thesis.
I started a project with the SECLOUD Lab, where I worked with fantastic people with different technical backgrounds.
I loved every minute of it, I felt rewarded for the things I did, for my thesis and, for once, I felt excited about what I did on a daily basis.
When I finished my thesis, though, I was a bit lost. I planned to finish everything with some margin, during which, I realized that, after all this time, I didn't know what I wanted to do after college.

Side thought: I think that having things figured out is the bane of my existence: I HATE the concept of having things figured out. I don't like it, it makes me feel anxious all the time, it makes me live in fear, fear of having missed something important that will affect my future, my kids, my family, I don't know, I should work on this, maybe seek professional help.

The experience at SECLOUD made me change my mind about my university and I found out that I really like teaching stuff, I like learning new things and explaining them back to other people, I like to think that learning should not be "gatekept" (this is also the reason I started this blog in the first place) and I think that people should feel the same.
Well, after my thesis (in October) my supervisor offered me a research fellowship in the lab, which I immediately accepted: in 2024 I also learned not to dwell too much on things.
I am still not sure about what to do "when I grow up", but I'm gravitating towards teaching at my university, I can see myself doing that for a living, even if, to be fair, I don't know if I want to wait that much (I would have to wait at least - and I'm being very optimistic - 4 years before actually teaching) for my Ph. D and for postdoctoral-related shenanigans.

Well, these were my two cents about my 2024, how was yours?
Until the next post!