About · Software engineer
Francisco Rodrigues
A software engineer who'd rather care for a codebase over years than rewrite it every six months. I write here as The Codeherd.
The name is a small pun. A shepherd tends a flock patiently — knows each animal, notices when one’s off, doesn’t panic. I try to be that for code: present, attentive, unhurried. Most of my best work looks boring from the outside, which is exactly the point.
I write here to think in public. The notes are where I work out an opinion; the tech radar is where I keep myself honest about what I actually use versus what I’m just curious about. If something here changes your mind — or changes mine — that’s the whole job done.
Trajectory
Developer experience and platform work — build systems, deploy tooling, and the unglamorous glue that lets product teams move without fear.
Backend and data systems on Postgres. This is where I learned, the hard way, that making deploys boring is a feature you build on purpose.
Shipped a lot, broke a fair amount, and got my first real education in what an on-call rotation costs a team.
Wrote my first line of code that someone, somewhere, actually depended on. Still humbling to remember.
What I care about
Responsible software
Code is a thing you live with, not a thing you launch. I optimise for the version of me who has to read it in two years.
Evidence over hype
Show me the trace, the benchmark, the failure. An honest "I don't know yet" beats a confident slide every time.
Teaching by writing
If I can't explain it plainly, I don't understand it yet. Writing is how I find the gaps in my own thinking.