He’s been a fan of web programming ever since his grandfather gave him a programming book for his birthday. Learn how passion can turn into a career in this interview with our Web Developer Andrius Bartulis.
From working in e-commerce to working on a special top secret project for Cre8ion
Andrius has just returned to Cre8ion after some time out working at an e-commerce company where he helped the team build and maintain an e-commerce system software. “It was a very valuable learning experience,” Andrius says. “I worked on a relatively big code base that, for the last 8 years, has been under constant development. There were quite a bit of technical challenges there, which is common for a software project that grows fast and has to adapt to lots changes quickly, in order to satisfy the changing business requirements. The experience I gained will be very useful while working on greenfield (new) web applications here at Cre8ion.”
And Andrius is back working on a very special project for Cre8ion. “This is probably the largest project in scale and complexity that I’ve worked on, meaning that it will present many interesting technical challenges that I’ll need to solve. The project is still in a very early stage, however, it’s exciting to see various little parts come together.” He’s sworn to secrecy though. “I can’t yet go into details of what we are building, but essentially, we’re solving a very specific and unique challenge here at Cre8ion.”
Working in software – an ongoing puzzle
“I’ve always enjoyed solving difficult challenges, and I guess that motivates me to work in the software industry. I can get creative at problem-solving and, to stay on top of the game, I’m always required to learn new things. The whole infrastructure – and the world economy – relies heavily on computer technology and software. That’s why I believe it’s important for all developers to always be on the look-out for better ways to solve development problems. As a global community of web developers, I think we should always strive to make software more correct, robust, safe and maintainable.”
An a-typical day at the office…
“As I’m a developer, most of my daily tasks involve understanding product requirements, doing research on various technical questions, and writing actual code to implement the defined product features,” Andrius says. “At the moment, I’m building a new web application product from the ground up.”
But a typical day for Andrius starts much like it does for the rest of us, “with a cup of tea or coffee while I catch up with my emails.” Then it’s on to the daily tasks. “Shortly after that, I check our project management tool, Trello, to keep on top of my tasks for the day. We use a “Kanban” board to easily track the status of each task. “I’d select a task that I think is most important and urgent at the moment, and just get going, recording key milestones or sharing any issues with my manager.” (You can read more about our recommended office management tools for start-ups in our previous blog post.)
Web Development Trends for 2018
When asked to comment on web development trends for the year ahead, Andrius replies: “It’s always hard to predict the future, but I think that we will see more interest in the functional programming discipline in 2018, both in the web development and the wider programming community.”
“Traditionally, most universities and other computer programming learning materials double down on an imperative programming style. However, the software can be written in a more declarative way too. This means that you instruct the computer of what you want to do, and not necessarily how you want to do it. This means that the programmer does not have to think about some lower level details which are often more difficult to reason about and get right (for example, manual memory management, shared global state, shared mutable state, manual iteration and loop structures, functions with unpredictable or unclear side effects etc).”
“Instead of having to think about such concerns, programmers can utilize functional programming ideas and principles to make it easier for them to build safer, more reliable and easier to maintain systems. This also reduces the overall cost of the system during its lifetime. I do have to say that this prediction is not one that is most evident or most likely to occur. It’s simply a prediction that I would personally most like to see come true.”
If you want to work with a talented team of professionals who can create a unique and functional website for your business, or if you wish to start the year with a brand new marketing strategy, then contact Cre8ion today.