jobs

My last experience with Ruby

On my last job I tried to go back to Ruby programming language. Not really by choice – but just because it was a language and was familiar with, and my last two jobs in Clojure didn’t really work out for me (not because of the language, really). I even imagined that some things would be easier in Ruby, specially while working with relational databases (something I really did miss while I was working in the Clojure language).

At the time, in my opinion, Rails was still a great framework – maybe a little too complex. And I imagined that somehow there could be better ways of doing Ruby code that could use the best parts of Rails and avoid the worst (like ActiveRecord, for example, maybe even substitute it with Sequel or ROM).

No a year and a half later I’m back to Clojure – and I will probably never go back to Ruby. And the reason is quite simple: I was working with Ruby doing exactly the same code that I did about three years ago. Rails didn’t change that much, but still was a huge mess when you had to upgrade from one version to another. The same problems I had in the past kept happening again and again, and it felt like a huge step backwards for me.
(more…)

By Maurício Szabo, ago

Stop disrespecting my job!

This will be a bit of a rant-sorry.

I work as a software developer. This means lots of things – the most obvious is that I create and develop softwares. I can’t think of myself as an “IT Analyst”, because I don’t just “analyze” software, and I don’t think of myself as a “Programmer” because I do more things than only program. Also, I don’t like my last two job titles “Software Engineer”, mostly because I associate Computer Engineering with calculus and digital signal processing and neural networks and such. Also, I think that here, at Brazil, people like the “Engineer” status, and I’m don’t care for titles and such – I’m more interested with knowledge and abilities more than anything.

That being said… when I search the internet to find a job, sometimes I find: “We’re searching for computer Jedis/Ninjas”; “If you’re a master of the computer arts, please apply for…”; or the innocent looking “we’re not looking for someone to work, we’re looking to someone to have fun with us while we create a great product”.

So, let’s start by the beginning: I am a professional Software Developer looking for a job. This needs to be clear, and it’s nothing better or worse than that. I’m not a Jedi – sorry to be the one with the bad news, but Jedi doesn’t exist (sorry UK, I know at some time in the past you recognized Jedi as a valid religion). Ninjas do exist, but their primary concern is not software… and yes, I studied a little of Ninjutsu (Bujinkan school) as a martial art, but I’m no ninja (I did not graduate – in fact, I did so little that I wasn’t illegible to even make the test).

We spent years trying to get rid of the title computer boy. Why do we, now, allow ourselves to be called of something we are not? Just because it’s cool to be a Jedi or a Ninja?
(more…)

By Maurício Szabo, ago