I am a software engineer based in Melbourne, Australia. I have worked in the software industry for more than 10 years, mostly as “a consultant”. What does that mean? … not much. I’ve work in most parts of the SDLC, as a BA, designer, developer, tester and as one of those guys that doesn’t really have a role but needs to be there anyway. I’ve seen projects go from inception to dismay and then onto implementation (and sometimes to happy implementation).
I wrote my first code when I was 8 years old in BASIC and have moved through Pascal, C, assembler, C++, Java, PL/SQL and many other languages. I currently call Java home.
I remain healthily skeptical of silver bullets, and would describe my approach to all work as “pragmatic”.
I’ve found the solution to most problems depends almost completely on context – while standards, frameworks, design patterns and methodologies can be great tools, people that understand when and why to apply them are essential. Knowing when to break the “rules” (or understanding the idea of there being “rules” to solving problems is kind of ridiculous to begin with) is crucial.
