I find myself pondering what I want to do when I grow up. It’s an important question, one that should be asked throughout once life. It’s most probably also a question that will never find an answer, since life will change constantly and new obstacles and opportunities will present themselves. So, where do I go from here? Well, if life brings you lemons, make a lemonade. Or don’t. Your choice.
So, still thinking what to do, having not found an exact answer, I figure I’ll tap into the, if I might say so, rather deep well of my software development experience. Having touched upon many different technologies the years, such as databases, html and css, JavaScript and C#, even odd flavours such as Clipper and Dataflex in a distance past, my unquestioned favourite tech is Delphi Pascal.
A bit unknown, uncommon and, perhaps also considered a bit aged, Delphi is the contrary; A well maintained, modern and powerful programming language. In fact, it is one of the most front line multi-platform development languages out there. And I just love it.
Also, I’m rather good at it. I should be, having used it daily since it was even Delphi.
I do all my hobby projects using Delphi, I’ve written many different types of apps and IT systems for companies like SVT (Swedish Public Service Television), TV4, PostNord, Handelsbanken and others. I’ve worked in Delphi teams maintaining software for the manufacturing industry, for the financial industry, for the music industry and even for the food- and candy industry (yes, I made the name of the last one up).
I don’t really know what I’ll do next, but something (apart from coding Delphi and C#) I think I’d be really good at is helping (Delphi) teams get better at developing better code. Code that is cleaner, that has fewer bugs, that are easier to maintain, that reaches the market faster. Helping teams get the glue between users, developers, testers, stake holders and devops to stick better.
So, I think, a perfect role for me would be as a developer of a (preferably) Delphi team, or C# team, coding features and fixing bugs like everyone else in the team, but also focus on getting the team to be better at it, to deliver better code and higher quality and to work more efficiently.