I am a software developer living in Seattle. I specialize in web development but I am currently shifting my focus a bit towards backend systems and databases. I host and produce the podcast This Developer's Life with my friend Scott Hanselman.
I'm headed out on my own once again, and no, there's no drama here. Pluralsight has decided to venture into a realm of training that I'm just not qualified for (enterprise) so they were good enough to let me go off and do my own thing again.
Before I get to the meat of this post, the code for what I've written so far is up here. The main bits are in /apps/peach.
Migrations are a simple mechanism whereby you script out some change commands for your ORM, and that ORM then builds your database for you. To me, this is pure insanity. I dislike ORMs (accept, of course, for LLBLGenPro, which is astoundingly good). Trusting your ORM to build a proper database is ... kind of weird to me. SQL is terser, more expressive and (as it turns out) just right for the job.
I was asked a great question on Slack the other day - I wish I could remember the person's name (sorry!) but I can't find it ... anyway they asked me (paraphrased):
Let's implement an intelligent shopping cart - something that tracks what the customer is doing, how they came to our store, etc. I tend to think of these things in terms of a "Session" - a shopping process where a customer selects things, puts them back, and eventually (hopefully) buys something. If I do things correctly (to me, at least), I should end up with tight little functions an exactly 0 if statements.
When you build applications in the Erlang world you create discrete processes that interact. In theory this is pretty straightforward - until you actually try to do it. Microservices fans out there know the value (and the pain) of managing a fleet of services; there are benefits to it, definitely, and also problems.
As CTO I get to call the shots here at Red:4 but I do have to answer to the CEO and others. It's easy to arm-wave, to go on and on about Elixir and functional languages - but at the end of the day it's what you do, not what you say that counts.
I like building things and sharing my experiences. I've mostly focused on the web, but of late I've moved a bit more towards back-end systems and databases. I also love working with Audio/Video.
I think sharing what you do is incredibly important; equally as important is to make sure you never posture as an expert unless you truly are.
