Reflection over the past year

The past year has been an interesting journey for me. After many years of searching I finally found what I want to do with my career. I have fallen in love with software development and I like to think I am good at it. Software is more than just writing code, it is oh so much more. Between the planning, creating, testing, deploying and on going support it can be a bit hectic. I started my journey as the end user, then moved to support. I am now testing and writing tools and small applications.

I have learned so much in the past year but the biggest thing I have learned thus far is that I have so much more to learn. I have a passion for learning so this is perfect. This will keep me hungry for more while my company benefits from the tools and knowledge I gain during this never ending quest for knowledge.

Given my path I bring a unique perspective to software design. Through my end user and support years I have come to learn what bothers users the most and also what they like. This has led me to focus on user interaction and methodology to provide users the best possible interaction with the software. I find that many times developers tend to think about the end user but only when it's convenient. When times are tough and code has to be churned out to meet deadlines - the user is usually the last person considered in terms of UI design and interaction. This is a practice the software community as a whole needs to change.

I am very lucky to have the opportunity to work with such a great team. There are many great people on my team from Support to QA to Development. Each person genuinely cares about the product and we all strive to make it better. We also have management buy in for most if not all of the things we do (methodologies, etc). This environment is rich with knowledge from MANY experienced developers and I get as much information from them as possible. I love sharing ideas and thoughts to help build my "arsenal" of tools.

Current Focus

While my ultimate goal is full time software development I am still in quality assurance and have learned many new techniques for testing software. The biggest concept I have taken away thus far is automation. Nothing beats end to end automation. From building the code to deploying to setting up sample data to installing and then ultimately running automated tests. Nothing is more comforting than walking in to the office in the morning to a collection of GREEN tests.

I have a long road ahead of me but I have the desire, the tools, and the team around me to make this journey.

I'm so excited......