Shifting Gears

-

One of the things I have really enjoyed about my career is the variety of jobs I have done. I have always been in a position where I have had to wear many hats. Now that I am in my fifties, I have had over thirty years of implementing solutions across different architectures and disciplines. At the beginning of my career, I did very little software development and my focus was more on system administration and database administration. I worked on Windows and Unix environments and managed databases in Oracle and SQL Server. Later in my career, I built email, web, and DNS infrastructures on multiple platforms. I have managed some mall networks and firewalls and then started shifting more toward software development. I have done web development for a number of clients in languages like Perl, PHP, ColdFusion, Java, ASP, and finally ASP.NET with various Javascript frameworks. 

The one disadvantage of bouncing all over the place in IT is that I have never totally mastered anything. I would say right now I am a pretty decent software developer, but when I go to software events and see some of the speakers, I often feel like a total imposter in the field. As much as I would like to be a better programmer, I really enjoy having responsibilities that are in other areas. I really love debugging system and network issues or working with vendors getting their applications working in an enterprise environment. 

Lately, I have been doing a lot more systems work because my main client has lost several of their sysadmins. It has been really cool working in this world where I have to interface more with other people to resolve issues. With software development, I can spend days buried in code and have no real contact with other human beings, but when I am working on server or application issues, I have to work with users and techies to solve the problems. I am realizing that is a level of socializing I really miss in my career. 

I can see though that my age is starting to catch up with me. In my younger years, I could switch between developing software, system administration, and managing databases and my brain could shift with no problem. Lately, I have noticed that if I start working on a system problem in the morning, and then try to go back to software development in the afternoon, it takes a while for me to shift gears into developer mode. It always takes a while for me to remember where I left off, and even when I find it, getting back in the zone can be tough.

I hate to see the plasticity of my mind going, but I still think I have several years of productivity left in me. Even though it is hard to keep my skills up to date, I don't absorb new information like I used to, I still love what I do, so it is worth the effort. At some point, I may have to stop shifting gears and focus on one thing or maybe move into a leadership role guiding the next generation, but for now, I am going to keep pushing down on the clutch and moving the stick into whatever gear is needed. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Asp.Net Core with Extended Identity and Jwt Auth Walkthrough

-
Image
  Quite often I think of an idea for an app where I would have a website and a mobile app that share the same functionality. Every time I start to prototype something like this I get stuck on authentication. When you build a web application in Asp.Net Core, it is really easy to set up the built-in Identity platform to allow users to login, but if you want to allow a mobile app to access APIs on the same site, that takes a lot more work. Of course, you can use a cloud-based authentication system like AzureAd or Firebase authentication, but if you arent housing any sensitive data, that's a lot of extra plumbing that takes away from building your application.  This walkthrough will show you how to create an Asp.Net core site with Asp.Net Core Identity for authentication and authorization. We will be extending the identity to include additional user information and roles. We will also add jwt authentication and authorization, so SPA's and mobile apps can use the API's and share
Read more

File Backups to Dropbox with PowerShell

-
Image
I have had a number of instances where I had a virtual server somewhere, and I wanted to have a backup strategy, but the paid plans were overkill for what I needed. I have all my source code in Github, so everything can be rebuilt. I just need to be able to archive database backups and uploaded files. I decided to use a Dropbox account and set up a scheduled task that calls a PowerShell script that accesses the Dropbox web API. Setting up Dropbox You will need to have a Dropbox subscription set up and then you can go to the developer's section at the following link: {% embed url=" https://www.dropbox.com/developers " %} On the main page, select create apps. On the following page, you will have the option to select the scope of the app. Here you can decide to only access a single folder or give access to all of the Dropbox functions. Either option will work, in my example, I used the full access scope, so I would have the option of putting different file types in different
Read more

Dynamic Expression Builder with EF Core

-
I was recently working on an ASP.NET Core MVC project where the end user wanted to have a search form with several fields with drop down boxes and a couple of free-form text fields. One of the requirements was to be able to put "*" at the front or the end of a search term in the text boxes to indicate a wildcard search. That was the way a previous application worked and they wanted to maintain the same functionality. Since I was working with Entity Framework Core using a generic repository pattern, I wanted to be able to dynamically build the filter expression that I passed to the repository. I created a static Expression builder class with static methods for creating each type of expression needed. public static class ExpressionBuilder { public static Expression GetStringExpression ( string dataModelProperty , string dtoProperty , Expression combinedExpression , ParameterExpression parameterExpression ) { if ( dtoProperty
Read more