César Soto Valero

SDD and the Future of Software Development

Spec > Code ?

Posted on February 1, 2026

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AI can now generate code faster than you can humanly read it. But that is not the problem. The problem is ambiguity moving at machine speed. Spec-Driven Development (SDD) makes the specification (a.k.a, the "spec") the primary artifact so AI agents get constraints instead of vague requirements. This post explains...

Projections for Data-Related Roles in The AI Era

From Building Models to Owning Systems

Posted on January 15, 2026

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Models are getting easier to train and easier to copy. The scarce skill is owning the whole system: data, deployment, monitoring, governance, and the business outcomes that fall out of it.

Why Creativity Just Became the Most Practical Skill

Is it the human edge in the era of AI?

Posted on January 10, 2026

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In an AI-saturated world where execution is cheap, the scarce resource is original framing. This blog post explores how to treat creativity as a practical, trainable skill and how to build it with simple daily habits.

When Answers Get Cheaper, Questions Are Gold

In a world full of free knowledge, be the one asking for the unknown

Posted on August 14, 2025

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Knowledge is abundant now. The ability to ask insightful questions is becoming increasingly valuable. I believe that mastering the art of questioning can unlock new opportunities and get the most of the current AI landscape. This post dives into techniques, patterns, and anti-patterns I've learned over time from top questioners....

Consistently Measure Your Consistency to Beat Talent

Because willpower, motivation, and discipline are not enough

Posted on July 31, 2025

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I've never considered myself particularly talented at anything. Ever. But I have consistently outworked my peers, and I believe that anyone can outperform their toughest competitors by just being consistent. So, consistency beats talent every time. The secret? Measure your consistency, not just your results. In this post, I share...

I'm Switching to Python and Actually Liking It

Here are my tools for building production-ready apps

Posted on July 15, 2025

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I've started writing more Python code lately (because of... AI, you know). In this post, I share the tools, libraries, configs, and other integrations I use for building production-grade Python applications following a frontend-backend architecture.

Evaluation Metrics for Real-Time Financial Fraud Detection ML Models

An overview

Posted on May 8, 2025

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After training a real-time financial fraud detection model, the next step is to evaluate its performance. This post provides an overview of the most common evaluation metrics and considerations for fraud detection models, including confusion matrix, precision, recall, F1-score, AUC-ROC, AUC-PR, and more.

From Classical ML to DNNs and GNNs for Real-Time Financial Fraud Detection

A survey of state-of-the-art techniques

Posted on April 3, 2025

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Financial transaction fraud is a pervasive problem costing institutions and customers billions annually. This survey reviews the current state-of-the-art in real-time transaction fraud detection, spanning both academic research and industry adopted solutions.

Building GenAI Applications Today

What seems to work, what doesn't, and possibly why

Posted on November 17, 2024

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Generative AI has taken the world by storm, offering endless opportunities for innovation. But as with any new technology, there are plenty of pitfalls to avoid. In this post, I dive into the current state of AI startups, shedding light on what works, what doesn't, and why. If you're looking...

Why GenAI Will NOT Replace Software Engineers

For now...

Posted on August 19, 2024

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GenAI systems are becoming more and more capable of performing complex cognitive tasks that were once thought to be uniquely human. In particular, LLMs are proven to be very good at writing code. With all the buzz around GenAI replacing software engineers, are our jobs really at risk? In this...