Spain as a Software Engineer
First time in Spain. I had no idea of Spain’s history. So here are some fun facts:
-
How long has Spain been a country?
- 1492
- 1492
-
Which is the capital of spain?
- Madrid
- Madrid
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Where in the world speaks spanish?
- 21 countries which state their official language as Spanish: Spain, Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Equatorial Guinea.
- 21 countries which state their official language as Spanish: Spain, Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Equatorial Guinea.
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Thoughts as a software engineer
- Decentralisation does not work for public good?
- discentralised when you need to.
We were purchasing tickets for various attraction sites across the cities
Cordoba - Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba
Granada - Alhambra
Barcelona - Barcelona Tourist Card
Most of the experience I had online were different.
The varied experience across heritage sites make me wonder if a centralised management of these tourist sites could improve the overall experience of the country.
Consolidate when needed.
- ticket mgmt sucks
Numerous times the UX created high frustration.
A) I made payment, then verify my email.
- Not aware and thus email verification link has expired.
- Ticket paid for was not received.
- Noone creates, only discovers
Words from Anthoni Guadi, art is found in nature. And thus his inspirations came from nature.
Whatever technical issues we need to solve, know that it has most probably been solved before. There is nothing new under the sun.
Consider best practices available on the net. If you cant find them, leverage on GPT tools to search for you.
Currently, I look to 2 tools for my search. Beyond Google, I explored perplexity.ai and Openai’s chatgpt.
Both which are well setup with web search tools, you can even ask follow up questions to provide an opinionated response.
- UX is king
A good app is good if its easy to use.
Doesnt matter what needs to be done.
Easy.
As little time as possible.
Interestingly, our experience at the airport left a strange impression.
We were clearing security, one which makes you wonder why we still need to ziplock our bottles, take out our belt in the 23rd century when SpaceX rockets can return and get picked up by chopsticks.
A typical Airport experience will entail the following steps:
- Security
- Immigration
- Food & Rest
- Walk comfortably to your boarding gate
An inverted Spanish experience:
- Security
- Food & Rest
- Immigration
- Boarding Gate
Why? What made it more confusing was the lack of instructions of this. On hindsight, one should be suspicious about the need for immigration, but 1st time experiencing this brings some awareness.
TLDR
This experience got me reflecting on the role UX plays in everyday living. Beyond the technology, let’s not lose sight of the UX. A good tech with poor UX could simply still leave a bad taste in the end user’s mouth.
Lets get this right.