About this website
I am Davide, and cdop.pt is my new personal website.
Who again?
I'm known as Davide to most people in meatspace, but my full name is Carlos Davide de Oliveira Pinto.
Should I know you from somewhere?
I studied Computer and Telematics Eng. at the University of Aveiro. I dropped out right at the end of this M.Sc. to devote my full focus to work.
While still at the University, I was a Junior Researcher at IEETA, and later helped another department (Materials and Ceramics Eng.) develop a measurement automation system for one of their labs as a freelance consultant.
After my studies, I worked at Triworks/R3born, then became a freelance web developer for a few months. One of my clients, MULTILEARNING Group, became my next full time employer, and I relocated from Aveiro, Portugal to Montreal, Quebec for this role.
After MULTILEARNING I wanted to do something a bit different, and I joined Tower Research Capital, a proprietary high-frequency trading firm, in their new office in Montreal.
I lived in Canada from 2014 to 2022. During this time I applied for and obtained Canadian citizenship. In late 2022 I left Canada and relocated back to Portugal (for reasons completely unrelated to business or work).
Right. Cool story, bro. So what do you do exactly?
I design and develop server-side systems, monolithic or distributed, for internet applications. These are developed on Linux, for Linux, almost always in Go, and never below certain standards of quality, which invariably include a sane architecture (whichever fits the system best) and rigorous automated testing.
I'm also well versed in agile development (note the lowercase "a", none of that flacid-Scrum or SAFe nonsense) and DevOps, especially developer support automation and CI/CD.
My list of secondary activities includes, but isn't limited to: writing, small scale agriculture, random DIY and other experiments, and personal tutoring for students in basic education.
Are you available for hire right now? Are you interested in contract based work?
Yes, and probably. Send your openings/opportunities here. Please read the notes for recruiters/business to save us both valuable time.
Are you interested in being a technical co-founder?
Maybe. Depends on the project, but most importantly on the project's risk profile. Send your proposals through the contact form, but be warned that spam and joke proposals will be silently ignored.
If this is your new site, what's the old one?
What's with the choice of domain name for this new site?
There's more to it, but the short version is that it's just my initials plus the TLD for the country of Portugal.
Why .pt and not something else?
The .com TLD is crowded and subject to the whims and tantrums of the USG. With this new proposal, the not so crowded but less appealing .net TLD might soon be subject to the whims and tantrums of some even more easily irritable governments in addition to those of the USA.
I briefly considered .de, but those are way too much work if you don't live in Germany and don't have anyone who can be your local administrative contact.
I was born in Portugal, which still has some of the best protections for freedom of speech in the world. Domains in the .pt TLD are by design, much more difficult to transfer and/or seize than average.
Also, since I am living in Portugal again, I get to work with local (I mean, really local) service providers. Freedom of speech + trade localism. Win-win.
You seem quite concerned with freedom of speech.
True. I'm also concerned with data privacy, the effects of climate change, and sustainability (environmental, economical, financial, social, etc.). Along with software and its development, these themes should show up repeatedly in future posts.
On the more technical side, free/open-source software is my main interest, and I keep tabs on the right-to-repair movement. Both of these are underpinned by a more fundamental belief: that computing devices should be controlled exclusively by their respective owners or legitimate users.
Wait, so you only use free and open-source software personally?
Almost exclusively. Exceptions are reluctantly made for firmware, and one-time-only-can't-really-opt-out scenarios, on a case by case basis.
However, if it's not my machine or my network, I don't really care what runs on it as long as I don't have to interact with it directly.
How do you live without Windows / MacOS / iPhone / WhatsApp / Whatever?
The same way I live without social media: peacefully.
Without social media, how can I get updates?
A feed reader, and a subscription to this feed is the path to enlightenment.