Ivan Klimchuk
Who are you and what do you do?
I am Ivan Klimchuk and I am a full-stack web developer. Most of the time I use PHP and JavaScript language pair but I always try new languages, frameworks, technologies and techniques. I work at the office with my team because it makes communication easier and simpler and it’s more productive.
Besides work I am a volunteer in the MODX Community and also I have the status of MODX Ambassador and Professional. This status obliges me to help other people in the community and I do it when it’s possible.
I live in Minsk, Belarus, like cycling, take part in local brevets (Velo marathons) and just travel by bike.
For half a year I’ve been working on my personal project — modcasts.video and trying myself in screencasting and preparing lessons about MODX and associated technologies. Now the project is in the closed beta, but I hope it will be released soon.
What is your day like?
7:00. I wake up and make tea with some sandwiches or cookies while my girlfriend takes a shower. We have breakfast, then she goes to work.
8:30. I take a shower and brush my teeth. While shaving I check notifications from social networks and email with the aim to find out important news that could have happened at night. Before going to work I always take care of my cat Meowth (yes, like Pokemon :). At least, I have to feed him and clean his toilet.
8:50. Go to work. Usually, I use public transport to get to work. But in case of bad weather or just on a whim I take Uber or taxi.
09:30. I am at work. I make coffee and grab some cookies from the kitchen. Time to feel that I am at work and prepare to work. I read articles, that were opened last evening (if they’re still interesting) and check GitHub. At this time I usually make my daily plan and write a short todo list.
10:00. Morning is the best time to finish your own pull requests. Sometimes in the evening you are tired and cannot solve the issue, but in the morning you have fresh ideas and yesterday’s hard task becomes a trifle today.
11:00. Also, morning is a good time for code review while your mind is still fresh and you can concentrate. In my opinion code review is the most important thing in software development for the developer because it allows you to learn best practices and important milestones of the project quickly. I usually have a very responsible attitude to the code review and try to tell the developer if the solution is not the best one. And I am very happy when other developers tell me about my mistakes. It allows me to grow and learn.
12:50. Daily scrum meeting with the rest of the team in Luxembourg. We have a discussion about the current state of the project and what each teammate is going to do today. Also, we discuss potential problems or important questions. If you know scrum, it should be pretty clear.
13:00. Time for lunch. Usually, we go to the cafe near the office. It’s the best time to discuss personal news, questions and impressions with your teammates. We also have a kitchen in the office, but what can be better than walking around and stretching legs after four hours in the chair.
14:00. After lunch I return to my in-progress tasks or start a new task from Jira. We have different time zones with Luxembourg, so time after lunch is the best time to get somebody from the team to ask questions about the task or discuss ways of implementation.
17:30. If I don’t have important tasks and pull requests for review I try to make some experiments with the project. For example, I can create a docker image for the project or a Vagrant configuration for new developers, etc. Sometimes I read tech articles, related to my work and our project (except Friday).
18:30. Approximately at this time, I go home. If I don’t have plans for the evening, I go to the store and buy food for dinner. I can also go to the restaurant with my girlfriend or just walk around the city. Sometimes I ride the bike, but it happens rarely. Usually, I do cycling at the weekend.
20:00. Have a dinner at home and watch tv series or a film. Rest of the time I do daily housework and help my girlfriend with her English homework. Best time to read books and play with the cat.
23:30. Time to go to bed, but not always. Sometimes at night I work on my pet projects or learn something new, so as usual, it takes more time, then I expect. I try to avoid it and keep enough time for sleep, but creativity requires sacrifice.
2:00. My deadline at night. At this time I just close the laptop and go to bed, enough for today!
What instruments or software help you in your life and work?
At work I use MacBook Pro 13" with 16Gb of memory (it is necessary to keep running virtual environments and some copies of phpStorm) and widescreen monitor 27". My main requirements are only Apple Keyboard and OSX, no more. I hate Windows.
For work, I use phpStorm for usual projects and Sublime Text for fast editing. I am CLI-attender from life with Linux and I use iTerm for manipulations with files, work with git, etc. And yes, I know how to exit from Vim.
I have a lot of aliases that save my time when typing commands. For example, the very useful alias for work with VirtualBox machines. It allows going to the same folder on the virtual machine from the current folder on the host machine.
alias vm='PWD=`pwd | sed "s/\/Users\/alroniks\/dev\/code/\/home\/vagrant\/Code/g" | { read place; echo $place }`; CMD="cd $PWD; /bin/bash"; ssh vagrant@127.0.0.1 -p 2222 -t $CMD'For internet surfing, I prefer Google Chrome because I am a web developer most of the time and I need their developer tools.
Also, I use Slack, Skype and YakYak (Google Hangouts client for OSX) for communicating with my team.
