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Why nachobuilds?

Why this name?

In summary: my name is Nacho (in Spain, it's a short form of the name Ignacio) and this year I'm commited to build.

Building can be seen as a verb that denotes action and collaboration. These two concepts have been identified as some of the key areas where to focus in order to create momentum for my personal projects and to grow professionally.

Background

Although I'm not a Computer Science graduate, I have some exposure to the industry. As an student of Aerospace Engineering, I started to learn Python back in 2018 when I needed to plot some graphs for my final year dissertation. This was something which enabled me to continue using coding as a tool for my university projects and for my day-to-day work. Working in an Aerodynamics Department, the need for treating data and postprocessing simulations is a must, and I felt Python was a tool I could use for making my work more automated and to exploit the data I was using.

During COVID, as the market possibilities in the Aerospace Industry were few and the tech industry was booming, I decided to take the course on Data Engineering by Udacity. This was a huge step forward in my coding skills, as I was able to incorporate new tools for dealing with large datasets and databases. Learning new concepts about orchestration with Airflow, understanding PySpark, or getting to know how profressionals use version control were key to understanding how broad this Industry was, and how far I initially was when I created my first plain scripts to treat basic data post processing.

Although my next job position was not related to coding (but to military engines), I decided to study another course on Machine Learning and AI in my free time (some years before the hype of 2024...). I did that because I strongly believed that there were a lot of the methods in the engineering departments in which I had worked that could be improved with the use of Artificial Intelligent (and I now believe that the possibilities are growing exponentially with the appearance of GenAI). It was one year later that I joined Airbus to work in a digital position within the Aerodynamics Department. Since then, I've had the chance to develop Deep Learning models and create libraries for postprocessing aerodynamics data. Currently, I'm building software (powered by AI capabilities) to assess the aerodynamics data of new aircraft designs.

What's the problem?

Although the Aerospace Industry and Airbus sound interesting, the reality is that this world is usually too conservative. It's good to experiment with Artificial Intelligence, but when you have to guarantee aircraft safety, the authorities won't easily rely on the engineers saying "I built this with ChatGPT". This means that all of the technological leaps always come late (and in a restrictive form). Also, working in a company as Airbus (with more than 100k employees) makes the adoption of technology hard. As Charlie Munger says in his famous Almanack "the defect of scale is that as you get big you get the bureaucracy... You get big, fat, dumb unmotivated bureaucracies". This also impact all the engineering departmentss and the rate at which AI is being adopted by engineers.

In an attempt for curiosity, I use my other hobby to combine it with the CS skills () - Collaboration and action for building a product. - Products that only one use - Deployment

Inspiration and goals

  • Video of Huerta de Soto (action!)
  • Blogpost for Deep Work (focus)
  • Youtube Vlogs (withmarko)