Moments of change, moments of evolution, a constant in my life, with the 25th anniversary of the creation of the web I’ve entered “review” mode and I’m highly perplexed.
I’ve been doing things for the same time (25 years), enjoying, always with the same concept and particularity: Enjoyment and result, but it hasn’t been relevant for a long time (which is also not very relevant).
I’ve realized that the usual thing is to do things within your comfort zone, and I’ve never had one or knew one could exist, hence I’ve touched and done unusual things or perhaps “untimely”, when a certain technology could be in fashion “Buzz” I hadn’t been using it for a long time because it didn’t give me what something else gave me,…
I’ve never done something “repetitive” I’ve always looked for how to improve it or turn it around without hesitation, but with one of my many premises “the important thing is to solve the problem” avoiding using such or such “because it’s cool”, but using such or such because it’s what fits best.
Perhaps it’s my way of being but I flee from “labels”, having worked in systems and development my place is development, programmer, and when particularities and levels start, and I’m not referring to the stupidities of ninja/samurai/…, but “full-stack”, “devops”… and seeing that it’s more of a label than a reality… it simply frustrates me, it displeases me but back to my thing, each one with their “stickers” mode.
I’m a programmer, just a programmer, not in any specific language, because I do it with the one I consider best for each situation and I consider you should know the user and be a participant (frontend? I guess not), I believe in having systems with a solid base and API First (Backend?… neither), a program/app/webapp should be designed and managed thinking about its execution, resources and life beyond the code, knowing the OSs, optimizations and how to bring it to life (Devops?… neither), knowing the data, its life, its evolution and management to determine what to use (DBA, big data?… let’s go to bingo with palabros, which neither).
It’s possible that my “mania” of designing things without names and surnames, abstract boxes that I specify according to requirements and needs has become a bit weird, when today I’m using such database (SQL, noSQL, graph,..) and tomorrow the opposite and it’s not out of “novelty” it’s because it’s the one I consider most suitable for that casuistry,… when we finish a development with parts in Go, Python, Java, PHP… and my pulse doesn’t tremble, but rather each piece is the optimal one in the most specific language (from my humble point of view) for what we want… we enter the, I’m Galician… but perhaps too much, because no one can place me.
I can only say that perhaps at these moments some things have stopped making me laugh, it’s not that they bother me, but they no longer make me laugh, like when they tell me “you’re a PHP programmer”, as something derogatory, and clearly I know there’s a great ignorance about what can be done and what is current PHP (7.x), but blame of PHP programmers, the same applies to Java, Python, Ruby, Node,… that I use and will continue to use, languages where development hasn’t gone hand in hand with the language and characteristics but with the I’m from “Spring”, “Django”, “RoR”, “Express”… and that’s nothing more than implementing the pieces and assembling a solution from pieces of others without investigating how it goes or stops going,… that’s not for me, it surprises me (and not pleasantly) how with so many JavaScript developers VanillaJs (the standard js) is the great unknown, how in Python they don’t know the differences of the 2.x family and 3.x (they’re many and very big), that in Ruby Gems and their management is more a matter of faith than something you can control, that in Java with java 9 around the corner, the code that’s made is from java 6… and still with its things,…
The evolution of deployment systems made me very happy, because it seemed that finally systems and code had the union (they’ve always had) for programmers to be participants in seeing their code live, but we ended up with the devops palabro, and the most natural thing was lost and simply nothing changed. Programmers still don’t understand resources, services and availability… just the thing of starting a docker container, if a swarm,… but without going to the base, that’s what this sector has, we’re about labels and parcels and it seems that not.
On Monday I have to take the car and head to Galicia for some vacation and I have as an objective to make a list of “things” I’ve touched… and only the OSs, and programming languages… it’s already a very big list, if we enter databases it skyrockets… but I don’t think I’ll do it, or at least I won’t publish it because I’m very lazy, not to write it but to explain the why I’ve used it.
Said, as a summary,… I don’t know what “the comfort zone” really is and much less the stupidity of “I’m a programmer of X or an expert in Y”, as a developer it’s not relevant who you are and what you like but what you really do (how you solve it), and doing things with what you feel comfortable with is easy, but the important thing is to see and do what best fits a need/problem, put yourself in the client/project’s shoes and not wallow in your comfort zone.
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