Vacation period...when you work in a team

Vacation period is the time of the year when sometimes several colleagues from your team are out of office...This is the time when if you have a task that depends on a work done by a colleague left for vacation...most of the times there is little chance that you can complete your work...and you might end up blocking others...and so on.

This is the least productive period of the year.

Maybe it would be better to just call the period...and abort the mission of delivering something significant.

This would lead to less work to fix later...and less frustrated colleagues.

Just accept that there are times when is better not to commit anything....and no worries...things will be finished eventually...when everyone is present... physically and mentally.

Job interviews ... who are you looking for?

There is a shortage in software engineers...that's what they say... so in theory if you know your craft you should not be worried...the'll hire you.

A job interview is like a hurdle race, you have to sprint and jump over a ton of hurdles (tiny fences) and if you manage to do that they'll track the time. The fastest one to get to cross the finish line wins.

They have an open position and try to hire the best fitting person for that job. but the requirements are not clearly stated...they are looking for junior/medior/senior developers....with knowledge in a list of things... the more boxes you check the better they rank you...and that's it.


Some of us, don't care about titles...don't care about listing every piece of tech we touched in our CV...we just do our job...we stay humble and create great things...

I am not an expert in Spring, nor in Hibernate or Java EE, so if you are looking for a senior in these fields...no luck for me there...in your eyes I am an inexperienced...equal to a newbie who learned to code from Youtube.

...but when I say that I understand the concepts behind Spring...I mean it...and the same applies to the other frameworks....because I've seen so many things that nothing surprises me anymore....I learned to look behind the curtain...away from the stage light...where the corps are hidden...in the closet.

I don't just do things...I need to understand things...before I do them...I am a craftsman...



Who are you looking for? Experienced leaders or just doers?

Experienced people understand faster than newbies...as they have the context of the past...and will lift you up...they will not only fix your bugs...they'll fix you products...on the long term...and will teach the craft to the newbies...if you allow them....and create culture....but this takes time.

Start looking behind the curtain...called CV.

Solving problems or building products

Most software products started from solving user problems....scratching an itch...or two

If you find a persisting itch that you can scratch than you are lucky...and thankfully there are so many itches....

The technology has come so far that nowdays building a pruduct is trivial...and commoditised....and everyone builds a product...writes a framework...and vlogs about it...brags about it on social media....they show off...

"...uh I'm so good...look at me...I made this"

...but people who know their craft can see through this facade....they know that creating something new is the smallest part of our business...

A car painter does not paint cars just for the fun of it....it paints the cars of people who need this service. This does not make him less skilled or less of a painter...

Or as a gardener does not plant seeds to every green spot it finds...does not grow plants everywhere...only where it knows that what it does is meaningfull....will create an impact.

Why can't we, software developers be like painters or gardeners.... don't build stuff for the purpose of showing off...we know you are skilled and companies hiring you will cherish you...if you deserve it.

Everyone can use a framework...can follow instructions... that's not creativity.... that's obedience... that's mediocre. 

Learn the craft of building software...and stand out creating meaningfull stuff...not by creating abundance of mediocre shit.

Solve the problems don't just build products..

Who is a Java developer - and does anyone care?

There was a time when programmers were good in one (maybe more) particular programming language, and they called themselves XYZ developer/programmer.
All that meant that someone can solve problems with a particular language.

Java, the language, is not that complicated and the syntax can be learned pretty fast. But knowing the syntax is enough to call yourself a Java developer? ...well not really.
As a Java developer you should be familiar with the framework of Java, the classes and features included into the standard Java runtime (the one you get when you install Java). And things get worse, as besides the Standard Edition (SE) there is Enterprise Edition (EE) with even bigger set of features to be learned. ...an that my friend, takes time and practice.

Assuming that you spent significant time with Java SE and you used most of it's features (you know the collections framework, the IO / NIO, the concurrency, ...all of them), are you a Java developer?
If you have spent let's say 14 years working with Java, are you a Java developer? ...are you a senior one?

...well my friend, you might be, but does anyone care? My experience is that not really...
Companies (at least most of them) are not looking for Java developers, although that's what they claim in Job postings, but that's a trap. Pretty fast you will realise that all they want is someone decent enough in Java but experienced in using one particular framework. So you have to keep learning and as you enter the rabbit hole there is no turning back. Choose wise which hole you pick.

Learning Spring these days, is almost equivalent to learning Java SE and as you go deeper and deeper you get infected with everything that's not Java anymore. You get used to things like @Autowired, @Component and @Bean and than if you get the Lombok virus you get @Data @Value @Log4j2 @Builder ...and than come AOP and all those shiny things that make you more productive and in the same time more....more stupid and ignorant. 

-Am I a Java developer?
I tend to say I am.

-Does anyone care?
...not really, unless I learn all the possible annotations and annotation combinations of a framework....than I can become a Java developer...for some.

Do you feel the trap here?


Think about it,
are you a Java developer or a framework user that happens to code in Java?



Disclaimer: I picked Spring just as an example, knowing that almost everyone in the Java space knows what Spring is, but you could replace Spring wit any of the following: JBoss, Eclipse RCP, Hibernate, Vaadin, Struts....and more.