“Microservices are going to change EVERYTHING!” - Overly-Enthusiastic Optimistic MeMy roles have changed as my team — and company! — have changed and evolved so I’ve worn many hats. I helped write some of the first microservices for my team using Spring Boot and JPA. Also found out why a lot of developers have beef with ORM…. Anyways, learned a lot about microservices and how they fit into today’s “Full Stack” world. Worked on multiple scrum teams and learned a lot about what makes good team synergy — “synergy” being my buzzword-of-the-day today. Did some DevOpsy things while wrangling Docker files so apps could be deployed in AWS ECS containers running on Fargate. Also, finally learned what a CIDR block is. Finally had to dig into networking guts.

"You want me to do what? But I'm a developer!" - Confused MeI helped lead the initiative to insource multiple applications and web services related to vehicle configuration. I made recommendations for specific tech stacks and libraries — of course, still abiding within the normal constraints of a typical enterprise company. I helped create a CI pipeline process for our existing codebases — I excluded ‘CD’ cuz they weren’t ready for that! — until the official “blessed" processes in place could catch up. Java web apps were deployed on web logic servers if you’re curious. Applications typically fell in our lap using antiquated tech and databases that GM didn't support so a lot of work was spent re-implementing these apps to support approved tech as well as closing security holes. Also helped assign seats for my teams on the second floor — no joke, that task was actually assigned to me. I laughed, too…and then cried a little.

“You get a targeted ad! And you get a targeted ad! EVERYONE GETS A TARGETED AD!” - Oprah MeDeveloped applications that facilitated delivering targeted ads to mobile users on feature phones (the internet-enabled phones that helped birth smart phones). Worked with a team of super developers and we churned stuff out like no one’s business. Some of my highlights included introducing Grails into the ecosystem — my apologies to all those I hurt in the process, lol — and creating a caching framework that handled multiple levels of caching with interchangeable caches. Sorry, I know, sounds very inception-y with all those caches. Also I integrated memcached — yeah, remember that? — into the process and improved response times. Faster ads == happier customers.

“Maybe I don’t know everything after all...” - Humble MeWorked with an experienced group of people that valued technical skills and methodologies. First time with a scrum team. I helped develop and maintain multiple Java web applications. I updated applications from the original Struts to using either Struts 2 or Spring MVC depending on what made more sense. This was back in the MVC wild west when a new web framework was introduced every month. There was a lot of legacy logic that lived in an Oracle database that I helped integrate with or I re-implemented the logic with SOAP services back when everyone thought SOA was going to save the world. Spoiler Alert - SOA didn't save the world, but it had its time under the sun and did lay the groundwork for its RESTful successor (pun intended). At the end of my tenure there I had started writing REST services for UOP’s first mobile app.

“Broken? That’s an easy fix! Done!” - Start-up MeMy first full-time jump into the proverbial deep end of the pool of implementing Java web apps. Fun start-up environment that exposed me to predictive analytics and gave me my first taste of balancing time/cost/features. By the end of my tenure there I had implemented an API integration with Salesforce.com and helped spearhead moving to tried-and-true libraries such as Hibernate and Struts 2 instead of home-grown components. I also helped implement some of the first unit tests and thus began my evolution to include testing as a part of development.

“Why are office hours so lonely?” - Teacher MeTaught labs for courses that introduced students to OOP with Java. Helped students grapple with encapsulation and inheritance. Sadly my office hours were usually pretty empty. I did learn to draw Yoshi on the whiteboard pretty well, though.

“Woah, Java runs on the server now?!” - Baby MeMy first foray into server-side Java. Implemented Servlets to drive workflow with a custom MVC framework back in the day when everyone was writing their own (aka the Java MVC Dark Ages).