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Learn more about Octavio

• Can you tell us about your first experience using a computer?

  My first memories with a computer were around 1998, when I played the 'Pink Panther: Passport to Peril' game, a point-and-click investigation which also had an in-game encyclopedia about a plethora of countries. I loved the game and also remember wondering about how a CD could have codified information readable by a computer, and why I had to keep my save files in the computer if I needed the CD to run the game.

• What is the technological evolution that has marked you most and what will be, in your eyes, a turning point in this field?

  During my career, the single technological swift that has impacted me the most was the containerization of web apps, which is used to facilitate portability of a system between different computers (among other things). It might sound complicated at first and I had to make time to learn proper Docker use, but like many things in this field it is simple and elegant.

• Explain your expertise, your interest in it and, more broadly, its importance in the computer world.

  My expertise is in web programming, but I program mostly local (mobile & desktop) apps in my free time. When programming something and seeing it run in my device I feel like a craftsman, apps are beautiful; however, their usefulness and impact is so groundbreaking mostly because of their server-enabled web capabilities. Web servers' importance is pretty hard to overstate, they power from the financial and air traveling system to this very text you are reading.

• Do so-called 'visionaries', such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg inspire you or do you have other role models?

  My computing idols are computing people. My biggest ones are certainly Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux and Git, Dennis Richie, the creator of the operating system, the compiler and the C language, and Gottfried Svartholm, the creator of the Pirate Bay, who combined international laws with lots of effective and creative solutions to keep his website online against all odds.

• Provide a valuable anecdote related to your subject or your days at school.

  I was getting better at programming but sometimes would still break my environment, which was enormously frustrating. After some Operational Systems classes and by getting myself acquainted with my terminal configuration file and some important Linux environment variables, stuff stopped breaking and I learned the valuable lesson of getting to know my own environment; the anxiety to start doing stuff exists, but it is no match for the beauty of knowing how everything fits together.

• What would you say to an uncomfortable person in front of a screen who says that "IT is too complicated"?

  It is complex, but "complex" is a set of simple things. Let's start from the beginning.

• What are your other passions, related or non-related to computers?

  I read, mainly history and fiction books, and also go to the gym. Traveling is also a passion, and I'm getting an interest in playing the piano.

• What makes you a Superprof in IT?

  I start from the beginning in everything, introduce concepts in a constructive and ordered manner, making questions along the way to make sure the student is on board but also creating these valuable neural connections which we call 'learning', also explaining different concepts in different ways if the analogy wasn't the most appropriate. I have received plenty of good feedback on my teaching and take pride in it.