Music to Code By: Meet Ricardo A. Reyes
Welcome back to our Code.gov series where you meet members of our team through a Spotify playlist. Today’s column belongs to our Director of Open Source and Community Outreach, Ricardo Reyes. With many years of government experience under him, Ricardo is a point-of-contact with agencies, open source community representatives, and people curious about Code.gov. His schedule is full for a reason as he maintains a fast pace around the office, so he relies on his playlist to keep his feet moving in order not to miss a single meeting.
“I find motivation and inspiration from real-life stories, human perseverance, stories from individuals that have challenged themselves mentally, physically, and spiritually to improve oneself. Whenever I watch a film based on a true story, sci-fi, futuristic or motivational films in which a character achieves success through their passion, determination, and dedication to overcome obstacles, I associate soundtracks with those emotions on screen.” Soundtracks work well for Ricardo as his software engineering experience is built on music free of lyrics in order to avoid distractions and focus on the craft of writing code.
When his coding skills change focus, though, his playlist also shifts. “When I’m reverse engineering systems, I play loud beats and heavy instruments to get the creative juices going late at night. That strong beat helps me break down systems and dissect source code. Troubleshooting requires a lot of brain power to analyze so I play music of different cultures and styles running the spectrum between jazz, classical, rock and even salsa.”
Enjoy Ricardo’s Music to Code By, on Spotify:
And in the spirit of open source, this playlist has been made to be collaborative. What would you like to add to Ricardo’s playlist? Feel free to contribute! #CodeOn and thanks for listening.
