Hi, I'm Robert.
Somewhere around year fifteen of shipping, debugging, and occasionally setting fire to software systems, I started writing about it. Not because the world needed another tech blog — it has plenty, most written by people who've never debugged anything at 3am in production while a Slack channel melts down like a reactor with emoji reactions.
I started writing because I kept having the same conversations. With junior devs who thought testing was a punishment. With architects who drew boxes on whiteboards and called it a plan. With managers who believed you could purchase innovation like office furniture. Codyssey is where those conversations get written down — and they range a lot wider than any single job title.
What you'll find here
Engineering, end to end — the guides I wish existed when I was figuring things out the hard way. Testing from first principles to enterprise frameworks. Microservices architecture where the diagrams come with honest warnings. Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and the data layer for people who just wanted to ship a web app and somehow ended up running a distributed system with feelings.
Emerging tech, minus the hype — AI, machine learning, and the rest of the buzzword parade, judged by what actually holds up in production versus what sounds great in a keynote.
Careers and the industry — honest notes on hiring, growth, talent markets, and the things nobody tells you in a bootcamp. No LinkedIn motivational energy. No "10 ways to 10x yourself."
Science and space — because curiosity doesn't clock out at the end of the sprint. The occasional detour into astronomy, physics, and the science of leaving a planet and (if the math holds) coming back.
Stories and satire — darkly funny parables about the absurdities of tech culture. The reorgs that solve problems the way rearranging deck chairs solves icebergs. The colleagues who take credit like they take sugar. If you've sat through an "AI strategy" delivered entirely in buzzwords and confidence, you'll feel uncomfortably at home.
Who this is for
Codyssey is written for people who ship software for a living: QA engineers, backend developers, platform and DevOps engineers, and the tech leads who have to explain all of it in a meeting. The guides are hands-on and assume you've already met production. The satire is for the days production met you back.
Everything here comes from fifteen years of building, testing and occasionally breaking software. Pick a topic under Start here on the homepage: each one suggests a good first read, and a different one every time you come back. If a suggestion is part of a series, you'll land on the series page so you can start at part one.
How it works
A new piece goes out every Wednesday at 11:00 Romania time: a practical guide or a satirical story. Series are released one part a week and are written to be read in order; the series page shows which ones are complete and which are still in progress. Subscribe and each new piece lands in your inbox.
Why "Codyssey"?
Code + Odyssey. Every software project is a journey — sometimes epic, sometimes absurd, always longer than the estimate. The compass rose in the logo isn't decorative: it's a reminder that good engineering is about knowing which direction you're heading, not just how fast you're moving. Although most of us are moving very fast in a direction we chose during a sprint planning meeting that ran forty minutes over.
The human behind the keyboard
I'm an engineer based in Bucharest, Romania. Testing is where I started; automation, architecture, and a stubborn curiosity about everything adjacent is where it went — which is basically the whole editorial policy.
Find me on LinkedIn, subscribe to the newsletter, or — if you have something to say — get in touch. I read every message. Even the ones that start with "Actually, I think you're wrong about..."