How I found my path to Software Architecture
I see myself as an entrepreneur in the making, trying to get back on top of things. Once I was a Software Architect for a big company, southeast Mexico, working on exciting problems and organizing many projects. Today I’m sitting alone in my office, working on some projects that will launch me up to stardom once again. Well, at least that’s the plan.
I’ll talk about that adventure in another post. In the meantime, I’ll share with you some things that I’ve learned in my path to becoming a Software Architect.
There’s going to be a series of articles on this matter, so you better hold your pants tight.
Should I care about your stories?
I hope you do because there will be treasures hidden in these articles, and I’ll assure you, they will be worth the reading, or at least you’re going to have fun with it.
Who are you anyway?
My name is Eduardo Ferron. Once I was a young, naive developer who stumbled upon a path that I didn’t even hear of: the course to become a Software Architect and save the world in the process.
I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, so, yes, I went to school. That was ok I guess, though the time felt so slow, you could say we were getting torture. Then I got out, and time has been running like crazy fast ever since.
The thing is, one day, I was in school, minding my own business, working on cool projects, and then I was out, working for this giant corporation with fifteen hotels in the Riviera Maya.
I got the job because they wanted to upgrade their technology, and what better way than hiring some new people with The Skills. In the end, this is the Future of Software Development.
Are you going somewhere with this?
Yes, hold my beer. We’re getting there.
It wasn’t that easy at the beginning. I almost didn’t get the job for starters, and the thing is, I found myself working on a development platform I haven’t even heard of in the first place. My jam was PHP back then, and suddenly I was working full-time on ASP.NET, scraping the web on how to implement EDRA. The good way. The only way.
I was a good programmer and a very persistent one, but I didn’t even pass the test interview. I got the job thanks to a guy — later, my friend — , who took pity on me and decided to give me a chance to prove that I was worth the investment.
I’m not stupid, ok? Well, maybe a little, but this is what happened: they were building using VB.NET, ASP.NET, and EDRA, the thing nightmares are made of, and I just heard about those things the day before my interview.
Back in the day, PHP was the undisputed King, and poping new platforms wasn’t that frequent. Now we have a new JavaScript framework every five minutes or so. We’re able to choose a Node.js framework for every day of the month if we want to. Back then, when you were a young developer, you clung to PHP and hoped for the best.
So I needed the job. My tiny developer heart needed the job — yes, we, developers, are people too — . I’ll talk about it in another post. In the meantime, let’s say my existence depended on finding a job. A food paying, roof caring, developer job, and I was ready to learn that mouthful thing of .NET.
I thought about not going to that interview and instead take a job using C++ Builder. I was a master at C++. I aced an interview for another job, but I went to uncle Google instead and spent the whole afternoon reading about ASP.NET, and boy oh boy, what I found was shocking news to me: ASP.NET wasn’t that different from PHP. Even better, I liked it. I liked it that much that I’ve been working on ASP.NET ever since. I ditched VB.NET a long, long time ago and tattooed C# on the back of my heart.
This fantastic adventure started fifteen years ago. I worked very hard and read all I could find on the matter, and one day, my boss presented me as The Software Architect of the company. Yes, I cried that night. It was beautiful.
I can’t believe that happened ten years ago. Time runs wild.
Today I’m well-versed in Node.js and recently started my Flutter journey, but that’s a story for another coffee.
What I’m trying to say is be prepared to be amazed.
Life is funny. Sometimes you go to the fridge for a soda but come back with a sandwich and Doritos. Either way is just fine. You are going to be ok. Allow yourself to embrace the unknown. You might find the next best thing, or a monster, that can also happen, but you don’t know it, and that’s the beauty of it.
Bonus round
EDRA stands for Enterprise Development Reference Architecture, and it was The Thing back then if you wanted to use Web Services on your platform. It was part of the Patterns & Practices from Microsoft, a collection of resources to jumpstart web development.
EDRA was complicated, but I embraced it with both open, foolish hands.
I love my time using EDRA. It showed me that great possibilities come with great responsibilities.
