Bruno is our 23 year-old programmer from Brazil, and has been working at Loopon since April 2015. He is young but extremely bright, and he has already left a big mark in Loopon through his daily work.
Read the interview below and get to know Bruno better!
How come you decided to move from Brazil to Barcelona?
I've always wanted to live abroad, and when I got the offer to work for Loopon, it just seemed right. Also, Barcelona's a fantastic city, so it was a simple decision. I grew up in Brasilia, a city that was largely planned, so moving to a city that also is human planned makes me feel a bit more at home. I like the fact that there was human knowledge involved in the planning of the city, not just organic chaos [laughter]. Furthermore, the language's also a plus, as I can understand a lot of Spanish because of my Portuguese.
When it comes to side-projects or achievements next to Loopon, what are you most proud of?
Well, that's hard to say. I have some popular repositories for some Apps I made on GitHub, and have also made many websites. For example, I made a website for Flight Simulator which was focused on Brazilian users. But I have also worked in some open-source projects for Mac OS, and also a game for iOS called x2048, a puzzle game that you can find in the appstore. It is free, as I tried charging people for it but no one would buy it [laughter].
What do your coworkers know you for?
Well, I don't know? Maybe that I try to do things well. You'll have to ask them [laughter]. I wish I could know what people think of me, but if I had to mention something, I once got told that I was the rock star of Loopon. I'm known for playing a lot of music in the office, and I try to be very knowledgeable about it. I'm also known for imitating very well and I would also say that they think I'm creative, ingenious and extremely curious when it comes to learning new things.
What inspires you?
Learning new things like science, physics or technology, and either building virtual things, like software, or real, mechanical or electronic things. For example, I have lately tried out neon art, small fake-neon figures that are made with electroluminescent wire that works like a fluorescent lamp, but it's actually a wire, and if you bend it looks like a neon sign that shines in the dark.
If you could have lunch with anyone you wanted, dead or alive, who would you have that lunch with?
That's a very hard pick, but I'd probably say Richard Feynman if he was alive. He was an extremely intelligent scientist; he worked in the Manhattan Project, developing the atomic bomb. At the same time he was extremely reachable and gave talks and classes about quantum mechanics, and explained things in a way that even people that didn't know about physics could understand. So, it'd just be fantastic to sit and talk to him, and ask him everything I want! [laughter]. I'd also love to meet the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, or Adam Savage from MythBusters, a science TV-show that doesn't exist anymore, but that I really enjoyed watching.
What's the last thing you watched on TV and why did you choose to watch it?
The truth is I don't have a TV, so I use my computer to source for whatever I want to watch. I think the last thing I watched was some series about Psychology on YouTube, just because it sounded interesting. If I had to mention a series that I really liked it would be Top Gear, a comedy show I really enjoyed, and the famous Mounty Python. But I mostly watch YouTube channels, such as Vsauce, Ashens, and Techmoan, mostly for the interesting, unusual, and funny stuff they show.
What does a normal day at Loopon look like for Bruno?
We usually have our daily status meeting to update everyone on the company on what each person is doing, and then I'll spend most of the day coding, studying documentation, or planning our next projects. Every once in a while we will also do some fun coding challenges, or maybe code dojos, which are meetings with other coders to work on fun programming challenges in order to improve our skills.
What are the biggest changes that you have brought to Loopon since working here?
I think the biggest change I have worked on from the users' perspectives was the recently released new graphical profile update. That took a couple of months to put together, and also required a lot of testing to make sure everything was working fine. I also took the chance to update and revise some older areas of our application. Firstly to make it more consistent, and secondly because the older code gets, the harder it is to maintain it.
Are any of these based on customer requests and can you give any examples?
One change that I implemented based on user input was the text search on individual questions. It may seem kind of obvious that the users would want to do that, but among so many changes and updates, it just never became apparent for us. Thankfully some users pointed that out for us and I immediately added that as a last change when we released the graphical profile update.
Which of the features in Loopon have been a source of your ideas?
I think the most important idea I had in order to improve the system so far was moving the search functionality to the sidebar. We were running out of space in our old search window, to the point where we were skipping some functionalities just because “there was not enough space”. So in about two weeks I planned how to move the entire search system to the sidebar. It seemed really good, so it was approved and we had that running great about a month and a half later!
What are you working on now and what are some exciting upcoming implementations?
Currently I'm mostly working with some evolutionary changes in our system, some rather large changes that won't make much of a difference to the user as of now, but will allow us to do a lot more in the future. However we do have some ambitious plans for both our web system, and our iPhone App, and we should start working on those in the near future.
We'll surely come back with more employee interviews & company stories, so make sure you subscribe below so you don’t miss them! And If you, like other users, have ideas to keep improving Loopon, please let us know. We would love to hear about them!
