For the love of software engineering!

Hi, I’ve just joined steemit, and I wanted to introduce myself through one of my passions since I copied BASIC code out of magazines and typed it into my Apple II “compatible” to play games with crappy graphics back in the 1980’s – software development.

In my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pa, as the internet became more widespread in the mid-to-late 90’s, I acquired my bachelor’s in “Information Science,” a degree which spawned out of “Library Science,” before cataloging books was replaced by computer databases, I guess. Fresh out of college just before the first tech bubble burst, I landed a job with a bank in Cleveland. They had me writing COBOL before the Y2K bug hit. I wasn’t into it. I complained directly to the IT projects manager that it was a misuse of a talented resource, so they switched me over to the corporate web site. From that point, I stayed on what I felt to be the cutting edge from VB6 over COM+ through C#.net with every variance of SQL Server, Oracle, and DB2 in between.

Then, around 2005, “Agile” development changed the way we did things from a process perspective that really shook up the malaise of large corporations who delivered 300-page analysis documentation, out of date the moment it hit the laser printer because the client changed their mind. I also got into Java to the point where I not only used it at work, but I also went through the rigmarole of getting a “certified programmer” and “certified developer” lapel pin from Sun... and I taught a class on the subject at ITT Tech for a stint. With that accomplishment, I decided to leave Cleveland and move to the warmer weather of Austin, Texas, the “Silicon Valley of the South.”

I worked for a couple of startups over five or so more years, mainly focused on Microsoft-based solutions. By this point, I had decided that it was easier to work with .net than Java because Java had a million ways to do something, none of which were standard, and Microsoft had only a couple, and one was usually more appropriate under given conditions. Also, Microsoft’s IDE (Visual Studio) seemed more developer-friendly than something like Eclipse. In time though, I became bored with the scene and kinda semi-retired in 2011, when software development became a hobby again.

At that point, I got into mobile app development with iOS and Android. I made a few personal projects including one to allow users to create binaural beats, a subject for sound healing. At first, seeing that Android was Java based and I had to use Eclipse, I was way more into iOS programming because XCode was a way nicer IDE. Of course, I had to learn Objective C, but that was no problem. Then, Google changed the game and released “Android Studio,” an IDE specifically for Android. This made things so much easier, and I also realized how much I preferred Java over Objective C. Then, Apple came out with SWIFT to compete in that arena. So, mobile development has indeed been fun, and I feel it’s definitely the near future.

Over the years, I’ve been writing in so many languages over so many platforms that I can say with confidence that software development keeps getting easier while it gets more powerful. I am amazed at the things we can create now that were not reliably possible even 5 years ago, but are now standardized as we expand the “stack” of tools available.

Nowadays, I’m writing code for a product that will go on multiple platforms at once, which deals with deep down audio and network operations, so that means multiple codebases instead of a write-once kinda thing. For cross-platform though, I am writing web apps with the MEAN stack on JavaScript. Nowadays, we don’t even use SQL or relational databases anymore. It’s all changed into “documents.” I guess this is feasible since we have such historically monster hardware, but also developing and modeling “documents” instead of “tables” is a totally different way of thinking, which is fun.

That’s what’s great about being a software developer – it encourages creative thinking. Technology can keep us sharp, make life easier, and be fun all at the same time!