Massimiliano Lambertini

Massimiliano Lambertini

Polyglot Developer, DBA

About me

I am a polyglot developer with almost thirty years of professional experience in a lot of programming languages.

I am also an experienced DBA (mainly on Oracle Databases, but also with MySql, Sql Server and, hopefully, Postgresql)

I am endowed by a curious mindset which, fueled by a “can do” attitude, has in the past helped me overcome a lot of obstacles.

I code stuff for work, but also for pure intellectual or ludic pleasure.

Development

I am at ease in a lot of environments: web-based, command line and desktop.

I have written a lot of stuff, from monolithic web apps to systems made of interoperating tools, using .NET Framework. I also wrote an awful lot of glue programs, parser and data converters using Python, and black box systems -- that is, systems that emulate production behaviour -- using Go. In most of these, database interactions played a big part, so I wrote and analysed a lot of SQL queries, stored procedures and triggers. I also happened to analyse SQL created by ORMs to find out why an application didn't perform as expected.

In ages past, I wrote a lot of stuff in Perl, VBA/Classic Asp and PL/SQL, and got my hand dirty in more than one PHP-based application.

Having developed for the web in the past means that I'm no alien to frontend stuff. I'm not scared by HTML or CSS, and know how to make web-based applications responsive.

From an hobbyst perspective, I also have written programs in C++ and Rust (see repo for more info).

Finally, I have little experience with Java and JVM-based systems, due to me not liking the aforementioned programming language.

Database

I had a long stint as a Database Administrator for Oracle Systems, from 9.2 to 19. While I'm no stranger to analysing EXPLAIN PLAN output, I was more a Systems DBA than an Application DBA; I setup machines from scratch, installed Oracle systems using command-line tools, created RMAN scripts and backup strategies and made sure all of these things worked. When it comes to advanced features, I set up standby databases using Dataguard.

I also worked with MySQL (DB + replica setup, some Sql optimization) and SQL Server (App-driven database design, some T-SQL here and there)

These days I'm studying Postgresql more and more, finding it a good and stable choice for systems whose priority is stability and reliability.

No-SQL wise, I studied mongodb but alas, I had no chance to use it in production.

Other stuff

I'm an avid pen-and-paper roleplayer. I like small, coherent systems that fit the requirements imposed by fiction, or universal-leaning systems based around quick chargen procedures and simple mechanics. No names here -- you're just supposed to know.

This passion lead me to learn about graphics and DTP, and typesetting systems. These days, I'm a big fan of Typst, a typesetting system that combines the simplicity of markdown with the power of an easy-to-learn programming language. When I need good-looking docs, I write in typst and covert them when needed using pandoc.

Languages