This week's Codealike Achiever is Andrés Felipe Suárez Villegas, our Codealike Concentration Connoisseur Prize (which is the award based on Focused Hours) winner for January! Andrés is a skilled coder from Colombia who has been programming for seven years. We spoke about his background and his experience with Torc and Codealike.
Q: I'd like to talk to you about your background pre-Torc. Can you tell me a bit about that?
A: I have been developing software for around seven years. Mostly web apps with Node.js, but in general full stack with both JavaScript and Node.js, as well as Cloud Development, where I mostly work with AWS.
Actually, I started using Codealike around four or five years ago. It was awesome. It also helped me with my bosses at the time, because I shared with them that I was ‘on fire’ when I had an extra productive week. They were very impressed and happy with my productivity levels.
I was using Codealike a lot with all my projects. Previously I was using Codealike with VS Code, right now I'm using it with WebStorm and it's going good. But I remember during COVID they stopped supporting Codealike, and then around a year or two later Codealike reappeared with Torc. So, that's good because actually there were not so many other programs similar to Codealike out there that I could replace it with. Most of them don’t have all those useful metrics and the ranking systems that I like to utilize. The ideas behind Codealike are good, and I like using it a lot.
Ok great, and can I ask, where are you based?
I am from Cali, Colombia, and I am based here now.
And did you study at the Colombian University to learn coding?
I studied, but I didn't finish. I studied in the Universidad del Valle. That was a very good experience.
Q: How does the Torc platform and community differ from other remote work opportunities you've experienced?
A: With Torc, I haven't entered like into the community very deep yet. I just put my info in and mostly focused on the work. I just feel that I will become more of a part of the community later, because actually I would like, if possible, to make the jump to something else within the company, to find other opportunities and projects with Torc in the future. So I haven't spent that much time on Torc’s community yet, but I would like to continue to get deeper into the Torc ecosystem over time.
Q: How has Codealike impacted your daily coding routine?
A: It has impacted it a lot, because, in the beginning, it makes me push hard, to try to move up in the rankings. So that pushes me to have another day of focused and intense working.
And I like to work hard and spend more time on my work because in the rankings, you see some of the other Torc developers working really long days, sometimes 18 hours or more. It's crazy and impressive to see some of the hours that people are able to put in. You feel like you're in a new world, knowing how the pros work, that's a good feeling, to be able to compete with them.
Q: Can you share a specific feature of Codealike that has significantly improved your productivity?
A: The on fire for sure, as I mentioned before, makes you push harder. To reach the on fire is good feature and makes you feel good about your day’s work.
Q: How did tracking your coding activity with Codealike help you identify areas for improvements?
A: Well, you also have bad days. Some days are affected by your mood, like how you wake up in the morning for example. Sometimes for coding, you have to put aside all those feelings just to be productive.
Maybe on a certain day things were bad because of something with your family or an argument or something like that. So your work can be affected because of things like that, but you can still look at the data and see that you’re actually having a good working day. Or when you are having a bad day, Codealike helps you to push through the bad day, And sometimes that can just at least help to make the next day better.
Q: Why would you recommend Codealike to other developers?
A: I highly recommend it for everyone to use it. Because like I said before, if you embrace it, you are likely to work harder. To see your progress, how you are compared with other devs, that make you like feel competitive.
It makes you feel not alone, which sometimes can be a feeling a remote worker will have. It gives you better perspective on if you are good or bad or something more specific too.
Q: How do you plan to leverage the insights gained from Codealike for future projects?
A: Well, actually, I just try to do the best every day, to accomplish what I can, to keep high in the rankings too. Every hour I work, I try to be the most professional I can be. Sometimes it’s impossible, being so focused for so long. Sometimes, you know, the quantity doesn’t match the quality. But I know that with Codealike I can leverage these insights for the future.
Q: How has Codealike influenced your approach to time management and focus while coding?
A: You can see the perspective with the timeline, and with the charts. You can see what days you work better and with more focus. You can know that some days you had an hour that was so good that it was better than three hours of another day. Codealike is great for finding these types of insights.
Andrés is a long-time Codealike user with a ton of experience with the tool. It is positive to hear stories from developers whose productivity has been largely improved by using Codealike, and has seen improvements in their work because of it. We had a good discussion and I enjoyed learning about him and his experiences with Torc.
