Make it so

So this past week marks the culmination of the past year of my life, at least career-wise. And, moreover, the decisions I’ve recently made now greatly affect my foreseeable future, and thus my unforeseeable future in turn.

So my new job title is “Enterprise Developer”. Which I think sounds sweet because it has the word enterprise in the name, although there may be uh, differing opinions on the true job description. Whatever. I’m still looking for the warp core.

Essentially I’ve already been doing this exact job for the past 3 months, although technically my manager will change as I move into the team more devoted to custom development. It still falls under the “Business Applications” umbrella, which is to say that uh, people use our applications for business. Yeah.

Basically we’re the (or, I should say, the best, because there are others) internal software development team for my company. So ya, we develop stuff in-house for our coworkers who need applications to do their stuff. Which is pretty cool because it involves a much closer relationship between developer and end-user than external, third-party software development probably would.

I have some cool projects on-the-go, which is an extremely positive thing. It’s great to be able to go to work everyday and be challenged, but also to learn. I’ll readily admit that I’m still a n00b programmer, especially with the Microsoft technologies popular in the real business world, but these next few years should provide ample experience to hone my skillz. Right now I’m working on a mixed bag including geocoding, workflows, and webforms.

Every week I have meetings with people who need my help – who need me to develop something for them, to solve a problem they have. Their current form system is too inefficient? Bam – workflow time. Their current web app doesn’t meet their needs? Bam – change it all around. Elicit requirements. Design. Develop. Test. Get feedback. Repeat. Real software development. And I totally don’t care that I didn’t recite the exact stages from a classroom model, because really, I don’t use that anyway. Those abstract concepts have their place, to be fair, but this is more quick-paced and small-scale than that.

I guess it’s not the ‘first’ time I’ve been a developer before, but stringing together blocks and wires in LabView to drive RF test equipment was more like being an electrical engineer who needed to know programming than being a true developer. Now, for the first time, I’m part of an applications development team that supports a large number of users, of ‘customers’ – internal though they might be.

Clarke’s Third Law states that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. I find this true of software development. Users really don’t understand, nor do they care to, nor do they need to understand how exactly their software works. That’s not their job. Their job is to do whatever it is they do, and use some software in pursuit of that goal. And that’s where I can now come in, as the person who helps ensure they can do their job better by giving them a better tool.

So ya, I’m pretty stoked about the future. I think I’m really going to enjoy this.

even pretty girl like you