Yes, it’s always time to learn something new, but this is just what I’m focusing on now. Java was my first programming language, that I’ve been using since I learned in college. I’ve picked up some other languages, search as just enough C/C++ to get through class, Progress (which appears to have been renamed over the years), Python, a very brief experimentation with Scala, Javascript, and just enough Ruby to be dangerous to your Chef scripts. However, almost everything I’ve done professionally has been Java. And while I’ve been working as a software developer for my whole professional career, during that time the idea that developers own their code in production really took off, which means operations is becoming an increasing part of the software developer’s job description. So far, that’s been mitigating by using managed services on public clouds like AWS, which in turn has led to an explosion of more managed services, which handily are also big cash cows for these companies. But the emphasis on running services in addition to writing them means I need to be good not just at writing code, but also able optimize how I build it to answer questions about what’s going on when there’s user complaints, or things seem off, as well as be able to tell the business what the code I’m writing is doing for them.
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