Life as a developer
The work of a developer is always more than just a title. They should be thanked for the rapid development of technology and its availability to all of us, especially in a tech-savvy country like Finland.
We at Agile Search started a small project wishing to bring you details about the life of developers working with our clients. You’ll be able to read their stories on our Agile Search Blog.
We had a great chat with Tarmo who is a full-stack developer working at Sofokus.
For how long have you worked in this role, how big is the team, what is the main product?
Agile Search recruited me to Sofokus last fall to the Magento team, it has two developers, including me. Altogether the Helsinki team has nine people. We make e-commerce solutions, integrations and ERP.
Can you tell a bit more about the kinds of technologies you are using at the moment and what’s especially interesting about using them?
I work mainly with Magento, which is a PHP-based. As a metaphor, you could say that other technologies are like easter eggs: You open it and you get the toy. Magento is more like a Russian Matryoshka doll: You open it and there is another doll to open. It is challenging but fun.
Our projects last from two months to a year. If you want to be sure to get a job, learn Magento, that is a skill in demand. Django is another big, interesting technology we have.
What was the coolest challenge you had as a developer?
The Valmennuskeskus.fi website has been the most interesting challenge so far. That was also probably one of the biggest things in my CV that got me hired here. But I believe the most interesting projects are ahead of me here at Sofokus this spring.
What is really important to you as a developer to have in your working environment?
Sofokus has been great, although there are deadlines and a bit of pressure. However, here I have learned that it is OK to sometimes take a break and just play NHL in the middle of the workday.
Now we are remodeling the office. There will be an open space and then a smaller quiet room. I appreciate being able to fully concentrate on just developing, not running the other business functions.
Once a month one of the employees arranges a day when we do something fun together with the team, such as go to play room escape. I have really enjoyed my time at Sofokus, co-workers have become friends also outside of the work setting.
Do you prefer solo, pair or team coding?
At the moment it is just us two working with Magento here in Helsinki. I enjoy pair coding, two pairs of eyes see more than one. For example, one project that would have probably taken me a few days alone, we were able to complete in one long day together as both of us saw different things in the code. On the other hand, in too big of a team the problem is that everyone starts mastering, which creates one big mess.
Is there something new that you’re looking forward to in your field?
PHP7 is starting to look like a real programming language, which is nice. But of course it is going to be a while before I can start implementing it with Magento. Properly used, PHP is the best language, but you can make quite poor code with it as well.
Young hipsters do everything with JavaScript. Personally it is not for me, but I do recommend it as a first language, it can be a good investment if you want to become a web developer and can only learn one language. PHP alone is just not enough. On the other hand I see the JavaScript world with its fast pace and all the new frameworks a bit frustrating, you can check out this article to read more. Angular was the hottest thing 2015, but in 2016 everything had to be done with React. The problem is that if you are making any kind of web service right now, it would be nice if it would still be working after three years. So much happens in the JavaScript world, without any proper reason. Some Gyro Gearloose creates a new thing with Node, JavaScript folks get super-excited, Gyro gets tired of maintaining it after half a year… And then it does not work anymore. This happened fairly recently and hundreds of thousands of websites stopped working.
How do you get ready and stay up to date with new tech trends coming in 2017?
Most of the trends die away shortly, but of course I have to follow them on some level even though I don’t see the point of learning every new framework. I get info from co-workers and different news sites. I follow, but I don’t start coding at home right away when I hear of the latest that is happening with Node. Events are interesting, we just visited Stockholm’s Magento Meetup.
