Hello World: Why I Started This Blog and What You'll Find Here

Hi, I’m Paul

My name is Paul Escarcena, I’m from Lima, Peru, and I’ve been in the tech world for over 15 years. I started coding in Java, moved through Full-Stack development, fell in love with infrastructure and the cloud, and today I work as a Technology Engineer at Banco de Crédito BCP, where I design cloud solutions on Azure and GCP, automate deployments, and maintain critical banking platforms that can’t afford to go down.

I’m passionate about programming languages and cloud solutions. My day-to-day is a mix of code, containers, pipelines, and YAML manifests. I work with Kubernetes (AKS, GKE) and OpenShift, design architectures with cloud services like Azure Web Apps, Azure Functions, App Services, automate infrastructure with Terraform and Ansible, build backends with Java and Spring, and increasingly explore the world of AI applied to development.

But this blog isn’t about my resume. It’s about something more important.

Why This Blog

The short answer: because someone helped me when I knew nothing, and I want to pay it forward.

When I started in this world, there weren’t that many resources in Spanish. I learned the hard way: reading documentation in English, breaking things in production on a Friday at 11 PM, and asking questions in forums where sometimes the reply was just “RTFM”. Everything I know today is because someone took the time to write a blog post, record a video, or answer a question on Stack Overflow.

This blog is my way of doing the same. Not because I think I’m an expert in everything — far from it — but because I believe that knowledge not shared is knowledge wasted.

And yes, I know what you’re thinking: “Paul, I can just ask an AI all of this and get an answer in 5 seconds.” That’s true. But there’s something an AI won’t give you: the experience of someone who already hit that problem in production at 2 AM and found the fix after three coffees and a panic attack. Generated tutorials are fine for the generic stuff, but when you need to know why something fails in that specific way, or what the trick is that doesn’t appear in any official documentation, that’s where human experience makes the difference. This blog has that: real problems, real solutions, and the scars they left along the way.

What You’ll Find Here

The idea is simple: practical tutorials, written as if I were explaining things to you sitting right next to me over a cup of coffee. No academic language, no assuming you already know everything. If you don’t understand something, that’s on me, not you.

The main topics will be:

Kubernetes and Containers

From setting up your first local cluster to configuring HPA, Prometheus, Grafana, and the full observability stack. I want anyone to be able to follow the series step by step and end up with a working cluster they truly understand.

DevOps and Platform Engineering

CI/CD, GitOps with ArgoCD, Backstage as a developer portal, Terraform, pipelines… The tools we use day to day so development teams can deploy with confidence.

Applied Artificial Intelligence

How to run AI models locally with Ollama, how to build apps that connect to LLMs, and how AI is changing the way we develop software. No hype, no buzzwords — real applications.

Cloud (Azure and GCP)

Cloud architectures, managed services like Web Apps, Functions, AKS, GKE, and best practices. What I see and use every day in production.

My Philosophy

There’s something I always tell myself: technology exists to solve real people’s problems. Not to impress with fancy words on a slide or to collect certifications.

Every post on this blog will try to follow these principles:

• Practicality first: if you can’t run it on your machine, it’s not very useful.
• Honesty: if I don’t know something, I’ll say so. If something is hard, I won’t pretend it’s easy.
• Accessibility: everything in Spanish first (with an English version), because the Spanish-speaking community deserves quality content in their language.
• Depth without unnecessary complexity: explaining things well doesn’t mean making them complicated.

Who This Blog Is For

If you’re a developer who wants to understand Kubernetes without your head exploding, this blog is for you. If you’re a DevOps or SRE looking for practical ideas for your day-to-day, it’s for you too. If you’re just getting started in tech and looking for a guide that doesn’t treat you like you already know everything, it’s especially for you.

You don’t need to be a senior. You don’t need to have known Linux since you were five. You just need curiosity and a willingness to learn.

What’s Coming

I already have a long list of topics I want to cover. Some of the first ones:

• Kubernetes from scratch: a complete series, from the first cluster to observability and autoscaling.
• Backstage: how to set up a developer portal for your team.
• Ollama: how to run AI models on your machine without depending on the cloud.
• ArgoCD and GitOps: making your repository the source of truth for your infrastructure.

So if any of this interests you, stick around. This is just getting started.

Thanks for stopping by. If you have questions, comments, or just want to say hello, you can find me on GitHub or LinkedIn.

See you in the next post.

— Paul