3 ms·

I ran a few small development shops a long time ago and then went into ecommerce in a bank. Eventually I was a bank compliance advisor (business side) for the

by epalmer 10y ago

I ran a few small development shops a long time ago and then went into ecommerce in a bank. Eventually I was a bank compliance advisor (business side) for the bank. No hands on IT and I was miserable. I was good at what I did, remediate systems and processes to make the bank examiners happy but 70+ hr work weeks were killing me. Hence I decided I wanted to get back to web development as the job I am doing now that I grew up. I've been at the University 9.5 years. Almost as long as my longest job. I run the development shop for backend and the cms and I am the scrum coach for all development work. I am by far the oldest and we joke that I am the resident curmudgeon, but in reality I am a pretty positive person. I do mostly backend development in the order of priority: - java 1.8 (love hate) - python (love) - bash (necessary) - php (meh, only as demos for people that don't know how to do something) We use cloudfront as a cdn and our web is php based. But we have UI developers for 99+% of the pho work. I wrote a java middleware system 5 years ago that is old and very hard to extend. We are replacing it with spring based apache camel code and routes. Love, love, love apache camel) Db is Oracle because we have a site license. I occasionally write sql for others that don't know or need to know SQL. Our CMS is cascade by Hannon Hill. A publish only CMS and we love it. We are 100% in control of all the code that runs in our web. ~140 web sites, ~129 are branded for our university. Web Servers are RHEL, load balanced by F5 load balancer. Backend XML database is Exist-db (love this as well). Exist-db uses xquery but I don't do any xquery. Apache httpd (love for sites out size of traffic) with Zend Server (love hate but necessary for Oracle connectivity from apache httpd). Yes I could compile our own apache httpd with oracle libraries but that is strongly discouraged by our data center staff. Of course we use git. HipChat, BitBucket (free private repos for non-profits). I do development on Mac OSX mostly and port. We never have porting problems. Others use javascript with jquery and angular. No node.js in our shop. SAAS CSS compiler. I'm sure I'm missing something that that is most of it.

ak39 10y ago
Like I said, full respect. Thanks for such a detailed response. Been hearing much about eXist but haven't had the courage to get my feet wet. Maybe some time this year. I don't use Oracle, have had all my clients on MS SQL Server (BI Cubes and reports) and they're happy. So am I. Not religious about this anyway. Have been dying to convert some of our consulting wares to pgSQL - soon. I don't intend to impose my views or perspectives on you or on anyone here (as I'm sure you have your own practical conclusions about what traits are important for developers to keep positive attitudes towards their careers). But after nearly leaving the field twice in the last 10 years I can, with humility, say this: I am more and more convinced that for a developer to continue retaining "mojo" in the field, and consequently to enjoy his or her work, he/she has to possess at least two traits: 1) Have the courage to try out new languages/frameworks fearlessly. (I am a bit of a coward here.) 2) Be a finisher. If you can complete projects - even if they're small (actually, the smaller the better) - you can always look back and say "I did that. That system they're using there ... I had something to do with it." I know the spouse couldn't care two hoots but it is the stuff that keeps me alive with hope. There's something deeply Marxist about this - I know - but I don't want to philosophise. I can see you possess both. You said: "I run the development shop for backend and the cms and I am the scrum coach for all development work. I am by far the oldest and we joke that I am the resident curmudgeon, but in reality I am a pretty positive person." I can see. :-) Keep well. (Beer next time on me) - Edited for clarity
- epalmer 10y ago
  I am humbled by your comments. > 1) Have the courage to try out new languages/frameworks fearlessly. (I am a bit of a coward here.) > 2) Be a finisher. If you can complete projects - even if they're small (actually, the smaller the better) - you can always look back and say "I did that. That system they're using there ... I had something to do with it." I know the spouse couldn't care two hoots but it is the stuff that keeps me alive with hope. There's something deeply Marxist about this - I know - but I don't want to philosophise. Agree 100%. Working in the bank (really a credit card bank at the time) taught me so many ways to overcome obstacles and to get the job done. Plus now 11 or 12 years of scrum (agile light) helps. I am a director so I am required to be the face of web development with campus units. Interpersonal skills, collaboration and an understanding of company, working units and individual's culture and how to use that to you advantage helps immensely. Stay positive, keep a sense of humor.

by epalmer 10y ago

ak39 10y ago

Like I said, full respect. Thanks for such a detailed response. Been hearing much about eXist but haven't had the courage to get my feet wet. Maybe some time this year. I don't use Oracle, have had all my clients on MS SQL Server (BI Cubes and reports) and they're happy. So am I. Not religious about this anyway. Have been dying to convert some of our consulting wares to pgSQL - soon. I don't intend to impose my views or perspectives on you or on anyone here (as I'm sure you have your own practical conclusions about what traits are important for developers to keep positive attitudes towards their careers). But after nearly leaving the field twice in the last 10 years I can, with humility, say this: I am more and more convinced that for a developer to continue retaining "mojo" in the field, and consequently to enjoy his or her work, he/she has to possess at least two traits: 1) Have the courage to try out new languages/frameworks fearlessly. (I am a bit of a coward here.) 2) Be a finisher. If you can complete projects - even if they're small (actually, the smaller the better) - you can always look back and say "I did that. That system they're using there ... I had something to do with it." I know the spouse couldn't care two hoots but it is the stuff that keeps me alive with hope. There's something deeply Marxist about this - I know - but I don't want to philosophise. I can see you possess both. You said: "I run the development shop for backend and the cms and I am the scrum coach for all development work. I am by far the oldest and we joke that I am the resident curmudgeon, but in reality I am a pretty positive person." I can see. :-) Keep well. (Beer next time on me) - Edited for clarity

epalmer 10y ago
I am humbled by your comments. > 1) Have the courage to try out new languages/frameworks fearlessly. (I am a bit of a coward here.) > 2) Be a finisher. If you can complete projects - even if they're small (actually, the smaller the better) - you can always look back and say "I did that. That system they're using there ... I had something to do with it." I know the spouse couldn't care two hoots but it is the stuff that keeps me alive with hope. There's something deeply Marxist about this - I know - but I don't want to philosophise. Agree 100%. Working in the bank (really a credit card bank at the time) taught me so many ways to overcome obstacles and to get the job done. Plus now 11 or 12 years of scrum (agile light) helps. I am a director so I am required to be the face of web development with campus units. Interpersonal skills, collaboration and an understanding of company, working units and individual's culture and how to use that to you advantage helps immensely. Stay positive, keep a sense of humor.