Scott Stewart wrote:
> I've gotta agree here, I've got 10 plus years, and I'm learning OO.
> It's the same warped logic that assumes that a degree equals a better
> developer.
>
> CF Developer wrote:
>> I hope neither of you are making that a stereotype. I have 10 years
>> as a CF developer, and EVERYTHING I do is OO, and I have a fundamental
>> understanding of it, and use the usual OO frameworks like Mach-ii,
>> ColdSpring, and Transfer (although I have developed OO apps without a
>> front controller, too), and even built my own (closed, sorry)
>> framework to solve specialized problems that the standard frameworks
>> didn't. I have architected high-traffic, high-volume and high-revenue
>> enterprise applications. Would you see 10 years on my resume and throw
>> it out? I hope not.
Sorry for the length -- I'm having difficulty editing this email.
There's a question for the recruiters / hiring managers at the bottom.
I was having kind of similar thoughts reading this thread, although I
was hesitant to post a response. I may not be the most typical example
though because I happen to be autistic and I defy the stereotypes of
autism by also being very outgoing and have worked hard to do things
like blog and write magazine articles. I'm entirely self taught because
I botched my opportunity for college when I was younger and then taught
myself OO programming in C++ from books in '97-98 shortly before my
first ColdFusion job.
Although it may sound egotistical, over the years the CF community has
gradually moved more and more toward a style of OO development that more
closely resembles the way I've always worked. I had developed techniques
for creating polymorphism with ColdFusion 3 or 4 long before there were
CFCs. I wasn't the only one, there was the CFObjects project also as an
example. I was designing software in a "Convention over Configuration"
way long before I knew there was a name for it. And with recent versions
of ColdBox and Fusebox that idea has become much more popular. I also
started doing database abstraction with ColdFusion 5, long before it was
practical. These days it's commonplace in the ColdFusion community. So
for me, rather than getting "stuck in a rut", I've always been "ahead of
my time".
I also have kind of a history of accomplishing "the impossible". Things
that had been literally described as impossible by people with far more
experience than I have, like Sean Corfield or the engineering team at
Macromedia, and I didn't just do something "like" it or something
"similar to" what they described. I did exactly what they described as
having been impossible. A large part of the reason why I've been able to
do that is because in spite of having a decade of experience, I'm not
"stuck in my ways". I maintain an active spirit of experimentation. (I'm
not what you might call a nine-to-fiver who stops working when they're
off the clock. And I know some of the other folks who've replied are
also similarly passionate about their careers and about learning.)
And I give back to the community, or at least try to on a regular basis.
I recently published an upgrade path for legacy Fusebox applications.
Others in the Fusebox community seemed to be disinterested in making
that happen I think parimarily because they thought it would be really
difficult to accomplish. And I don't even use Fusebox for my own
projects -- I haven't for a long time (though I have for clients). But I
hammered out a solution in a few hours just because I saw a niche where
people were struggling with being "trapped" on an old version and I
wanted to help them out.
Personally my biggest career challenge is social. It's a long story that
I won't get into right now, but it's something that's common to people
on the autism spectrum. So for right now I'm mostly hoping to hear more
from people interested in having me help them integrate my open-source
projects on a contract basis. I would certainly consider an
architect-level job, although I haven't been aggressively pursuing one.
This message is probably longer than it should have been. That's one of
my challenges related to the autism. I'm not good at synopsis. ;)
However I do have a question here getting back to the subject.
What are the best strategies for a person like myself who's been doing
this for roughly a decade, if we wanted to aggressively pursue
architect-level jobs? I think this goes straight back to Dave's
questions. I know for a fact that I don't fit the stereotype of being an
"old dog" (to whom new tricks can't be taught). And several of the other
folks who've replied also fall in this category (I know some of them
personally). So how does one of us quickly and effectively communicate
that to a potential employer?
Most of us don't have magazine articles to show and even for those of us
who do it's kind of like blogs - the people doing the hiring frequently
don't have the time to read them or the skill to be very discriminating
about their content. And of course certification is out as a criteria
because there aren't any questions on the exam about the philosophy of
OO design and architecture. Which leaves me thinking that the only tool
we would have to communicate our ability to adapt is personal assurance.
Is that really the best available method of proving our abilities?
--
s. isaac dealey ^ new epoch
isn't it time for a change?
ph: 781.769.0723
http://onTap.riaforge.org/blog
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