For those of you who don't know me, I'm a queer, cisgender British software engineer living in #Barcelona working for an #OSS company & am mostly known for my work in the #Java / #JVM / #Performance / #Observability / #Architecture spaces.
I've written a bunch of books about software. However, this account is much more likely to talk about random stuff, society, #queer and #leftist politics, #antifascism, #cats, #green issues & food more than tech specifically.
Posts in EN & sometimes ES.
@kittylyst moar cat posts, please!
@eminem made me post this. 
@kittylyst Hi Ben, maybe controversial but why do you sell your book on amazon? Or did you had no choice? Since when are you a Dev? Did you study CS or what was your way into programming? Do you like/support the catalan movement for independency aaand can you recommend a vegan restaurant in Barcelona?
@k0nfus Well, there's several questions there. In practice, any mainstream book with a commercial publisher has to rely on Amazon - they are a de facto monopoly. There are other routes, e.g. self-publishing, that others have done successfully, but they're not things I have explored seriously.
@k0nfus In terms of development - I received a computer for my 8th birthday & have programmed more-or-less every day since. I am entirely self-taught and have no academic qualifications in CS of any kind. My academics are all in Mathematics & Theoretical Physics (including some work in Computer Simulation of Quantum Field Theory). The first time that I was actually paid for developing code was 1997 (25 years ago) to supplement my income as a PhD student.
@kittylyst ya, fair enough
@kittylyst Barcelona rocks, but I prefer to live in the outskirts
#WFA
@SebasFC That's cool. I really like the countryside too, but I'll always love the right kind of city - and BCN is a welcome change of pace after London.
@kittylyst ooh, another person I knew years ago who's (sensibly) moved away from the UK. /waves