I like to help people. That’s why I am a programmer
Hey there! What about new amusing stories from our web developers? It is the third part of the ADCI Solutions’ team interviews. This time we want to present our team lead — Evgeny Leonov. We are going to talk about education, work projects and, of course, professional web developer’s habits. Enjoy!
Where did you study? Are you a mathematician? Do you apply knowledge received in the University somehow?
I studied at the Faculty of the Computer Science at Omsk State University. What I do now — web development — we didn’t learn at the university.
But the field of web development was interesting for me, too. The university has instilled the ability to learn, set goals and realize them. Maybe I wouldn’t know what the programming is without the university — we were taught programming, not web development. I was interested in this, so I learned everything by myself.
Do you code something for Open Source projects? Do you code just for fun? Why are you doing this?
Generally, I have enough work. In my free time, I usually study something connected with Drupal. I teach interns so I need to know all the details. They tend to be forgotten over the time, you need to constantly repeat and study them. Moreover, you need to keep yourself informed about trends in the IT field. For example, about everything connected with Drupal 8. At the moment, I’m studying Symfony because we have projects being made with it, and Drupal 8 contains Symfony components in the core.
There’s a belief that programmers deal with everything that works on electricity. Have somebody ever told you: “Hey, you’re a programmer, fix this or that”? How was it?
Million times! As soon as computers appeared. People demand some kind of a non-human knowledge from you and generalize this sphere too much. If you are a programmer, people think you are a computer engineer and, by default, you understand everything about the hardware. There were a lot of occasions.
I am often asked to erase viruses off computers, take them apart or clean from dust, etc.
Do you write to music? Why yes? Why not?
Sometimes I do. If there are words in a song that I understand it’s too distracting. Therefore, audiobooks are not suitable at all. If the music in the background goes without words — it doesn’t matter what it is.
Some experiment has shown that if a person is shut in an absolutely soundproof room, it starts to put pressure on their state of mind. It is important for a person to have a sound in the background, he or she can not remain in an absolute silence.
At the same time, the background should be soothing: if there are any sudden sounds, this can change a focus of your attention. And if you are distracted from some complicated tasks, you have to return to them again, from scratch, and build a process in your head the second time.
Do you think that programming changes a way people think?
It seems to me that a way of thinking is initially formed by your personality. One becomes a programmer because he or she has such way of thinking. Maybe, over the time, you start to be more attentive to details, you try to consider all in depth.
It seems to me, that the more you know, the more you learn, the more you see problems and mistakes — your own and other people’s, the more it constrains your possible actions both at work and in the rest of a life. At least for me, it works that way. If you want to see a free way of thinking, look at children. There a lot of experiments where they show it.
How did your parents feel about your sitting at the computer? Didn’t they forbid?
I got my computer when I was in the 10th or 11th grade of school. I was not really small, and there were no prohibitions. Either there was no Internet or toys on the computer. In my childhood, I had a game console and my parents forbade me to play too much, but it is a whole different story.
At first, I lived in the countryside, and when I was the first-year or the two-year student I did not have a computer, although I studied at the Computer Science Department! I went home for a weekend, there was the access to the computer where I did something for my classes. Then I realized that I had to change something — and got the computer closer, at hand.
The first application/site/project. How did it all start?
The first working project. When I started, everything was much more fun. It was more than 5 years ago when I came for an internship. I was the second intern in our company. My first project was not very complicated — the output of content and its optimization. The only thing that I remember — the client was an Englishman and it was a small project which was finished without any problems.
If you had a time machine what project would you do differently, or maybe some of them you want to do again?
In fact, a lot of things. I’d give myself some useful advice, help with the key decisions, help the guys avoid danger, buy bitcoins, etc.
Perhaps, I would even return to the same point several times to make sure that the best of the desired results were achieved.
What do you like the most about the responsibilities of a web developer? What are you proud of?
I like that the results of the web developer’s work can be used by people from all over the world. It really adds enthusiasm to the development process. I want to do my best so that website’s visitors can comfortably use the given functionality.
In addition, technologies in the field of web development are actively being improved. If you are a web developer and like to learn something new, your field of activity always offers you ways of your own development.
And what are the professional developers watching? What was the last movie you watched?
I don’t watch movies and TV series much. If I watch, it’s usually something not very popular. I prefer arthouse movies. Also, I like to go to the theater.
Finish the sentence: “I can not imagine my day without …”
I can’t imagine my day without my hobbies. Just lying on a sofa and watching TV is not about me. Also, I am learning German and Japanese now, try to broaden my horizons. In the evenings, I go to the gym trying to live a healthy life.
This is the end. It was such sated interview! We are waiting for your feedback. What question do you want to be answered in the next blog post?
Originally posted at the ADCI Solutions website.
