Pietro Rea

Finally, with the help of AI, I have moved my blog off of Gatsby.js and onto what I’ve long known should be its final state: a custom Typescript script that builds a static site from a headless WordPress instance (source code here).

This year was the first time that several co-workers and interviewees referenced my blog during conversation.

I only spent 6 days in Lima, but I can pass along a few impressions, mostly noting how things have changed in the last 11 years.

This has been a very special year for my family and one that I’ve been deeply grateful for.

Last time I logged into my WordPress instance to update WordPress and its plugins, something went wrong and I ended up losing access to WordPress, which I promptly resolved in the AWS Lightsail console by re-launching a clone of the instance from a backup…

I’ll be the first to admit that the most fun part about being a software engineer is the act of writing code.

This morning I got Meta’s LLaMA model running on my Apple Silicon (M2 Pro) MacBook Pro in under an hour using Simon Wilson’s llm CLI utility as well as its llama.cpp plugin.

Happy 2024!

In 2023, despite still only reading a modest amount, I almost tripled the number of books I read per year.

Between Christmas and New Years I normally update a couple of sites and servers that I maintain, including this personal blog.

For the past month, I’ve mostly used an LTE Apple Watch Series 9 as my main mobile computing device.

As a security-minded technologist, you probably use a password manager, create unique, appropriately-complex passwords and turn on MFA for all the apps you use internally, right?

For four months this year (April-July), in addition to working from my home office, I also had a reserved dedicated desk at a Regus coworking space close to home.

SwiftData, Apple’s long-awaited new framework for data persistence, was finally announced last month at WWDC 2023.

I’ve read a few books on engineering management and The Manager’s Path is now one of my favorites.

Every time a business or project shuts down, all the source code it produced, typically private and proprietary, never sees the light of day again.

GitHub Copilot for Business came out on Valentine’s day of this year.

As I proposed in my Gatsby.js retro, I finally transitioned this blog from using Markdown files stored in git to using WordPress as a headless CMS (diff here).

I’m very excited to announce that Meadow has raised a $3.5M seed round to build a modern student financial services platform for universities.

It’s been over four years since I started building my blog on Gatsby.js.

I take a lot of notes as I work during the day.

One of the skills I wish I’d learned earlier in my career is basic Linux server administration.

I get too many emails.

I’m excited to announce the release my new book, iOS App Distribution & Best Practices!

Hurricane Sandy hit New York City three months into my first job as a software developer.

I’ve spent the last 2 weeks researching and writing about code signing and provisioning for my upcoming book “iOS App Distribution & Best Practices”.

The eight edition of Core Data by Tutorials is out!

I’m happy to announce that I’m working on a new book with the raywenderlich.com team.

Anyone who spends any significant time in Xcode has to delete the Derived Data directory from time to time.

My last day at Upside was a week a ago.

Like many developers, I often do my work on multiple machines.

I’m currently on paternity leave for our second child.

The last days of 2018 are upon us!

You know you’re a developer when you’ve spent more time moving your blog from platform to platform instead of actually writing blog posts.

For the past month, I’ve been working on an updated version of 99 redditsfor iOS with Aman. 99 reddits is a lightweight Reddit client that lets you quickly explore images and (some) animated GIFs from any subreddit. 99 reddits was first launched back in 2…

Update 2017-12-04: “Engineering has determined that your bug report (35633289) is a duplicate of 34404165 and will be closed.”

I’m happy to announce that there’s a new edition of Core Data by Tutorialsavailable today, fully updated for iOS 11, Swift 4 and Xcode 9.

One of the first things I noticed after striking out on my own is how much my old employer did on my behalf.

Two months ago I left my full time software engineering job at Quidsi/Amazon to move to Washington D.C.

During the past few years of doing mobile development I’ve found a number of tools that have saved me time and frustration.

We’ve updated Core Data by Tutorials for Xcode 6.1.

Good news — Core Data by Tutorials launched yesterday in PDF format.

I just finished watching a WWDC talk titled A Strategy of Great Work.