I was born in São Paulo and moved to Florianópolis as a kid. I fell in love with the amazing nature, sport and music of the Magic Island.
In the next decade, I became a singer-songwriter, got a Karate blue belt, won back-to-back Carnavals with a samba school and wasted thousands of hours playing League of Legends.
I studied Economics at Federal University of Santa Catarina, which I chose for my love for History and Mathematics. I learned a lot of Politics, Statistics and Macroeconomics. But Economics is a field guilty of over-abstraction.
We would spend months studying models that were far too simplified to be applicable in real-life. I felt really disconnected from my studies which led to me dropping out after 2 years.
My first contact with programming was as a Data Analyst Intern at a Big Data startup. We used Microsoft Excel and Power BI to generate our reports.
With millions of data entries, it wasn't long until my Dell notebook became unusable. This led me to learn Python, Pandas and Matplotlib to better deal with datasets. I also learned Selenium and pyautogui.
I had always been obsessed with user interfaces. My friends couldn't bear me pointing out misplaced buttons, broken forms and ugly websites all the time.
When I found out what the underlying technologies where, I did a deep dive into Frontend Development. I completed FreeCodeCamp's Responsive Web Design and swiftly progressed to Javascript, and later, React.
I became more active within the Brazilian Dev community, cataloguing UI bugs with #berryux and building phived and css2wind. I learned more about Open Source and building in public, often building features with other developers.
In 2024, I traveled to Torino, Italy to visit my dad. My life flipped upside down and I ended up living in Málaga, Spain for a while. After I failed to get a job, I moved to the UK and landed a job in Bath, where I currently live.
If you want to get in touch, send me a DM on X or an email lukeberrypi@gmail.com.
Thank you for reading and have an excellent rest of your day!
Best,
Luke