Back to Engineering Vol. 2: A Path to Wisdom

A Path to “Wisdom”

I have been a Java developer for about 17 years already, starting with Java 1.4 and Struts 1.2 and JSP-related stuff. I had a chance to use many other frameworks such as Spring, JSF, Spring Boot, and as a web developer, I enjoyed developing Java for web programming. This was the part before I joined Red Hat.

When I was a consultant at Red Hat, I mainly used the Java stack as the Red Hat Middleware was mainly written with Java stack, and Red Hat application runtimes consist of mainly Java-related technologies such as Spring Boot, Vert.x, and Quarkus.

My Java journey didn’t end with my moving to the Red Hat training team, where I created applications mostly again with Java. I was in the AppDev team and as I said previously, Java was one of the main languages that are used in application development on the Red Hat technologies.

It was about 9 months ago that I wanted to get serious with Java development under the “engineering” title again by moving to the Red Hat AMQ Streams/Kafka team. I truly enjoy Kafka as it has been my technical niche for years. However, as the Rolling Stones say in their song (and as it is re-stated a couple of times in the House M.D. series): “you can’t always get what you want”.

In your -engineering- career, there are times when you should take a decision on what to do next; your path.

It can be a new company or a new team. It can be a new city or a country. Moreover, it can be a new language or a new framework. Maybe you are doing a total technology stack change by choosing a new path. Sometimes it is the time to learn new things and grow your career and improve yourself.

The Wisdom Move

A month ago or so, an internal opportunity happened and I decided to move to another team within Red Hat -again as an engineer.

I am moving to the Ansible Lightspeed (formerly Wisdom) team as of August 21!

Ansible has been one of the technologies that I’ve been interested in for some time, especially when I was a Middleware Consultant at Red Hat. I remember I got a lot of help from Ansible, for automating things like installing and setting up a Kafka cluster for a few customers. Now it is time for a giveback to Ansible I guess:) Therefore, I am happy to be a part of the Ansible Lightspeed/Wisdom team.

For this move, I am switching my development stack from Java to Python (and Django).

Python has been one of the languages that I am interested in for some time. I developed the Strimzi Kafka CLI with Python and I have no regret using it as Python is one of the best languages for developing a CLI. Apart from my CLI development experience with Python, I have some Django experience. I had a chance to develop a few Django services for World Health Organization for a project called “WHO Academy” when I was working with the Red Hat Open Innovation Labs team for them. While you have a main stack and you just touch other languages, it is easy, but since this is a stack change, as Master Yoda says, I might need to unlearn some things to learn new things as I am putting something new onto my 15+ years of experience.

Answers for the Mere Mortals

This move will cause many questions in the brilliant minds of the folks who already know me for sure. Let me answer some of them upfront.

Q: Why Python? Java is a more enterprise language(!) than Python, so why choose Python?

Wrong. Python has an easy start for anyone but it is also widely used in many enterprise areas. Python is widely used in machine learning and the Ansible project itself is written with Python.

Also, being a fan of a language or technology is wrong. You can love them, but you mustn’t be a fan of them. Lately, I like Python a bit more than Java, because of a few reasons, but I am not a fan of either of them.

As a Software Crafter, a software programming language doesn’t matter to me as it is just a tool. Tools can be switched, changed, or updated over time, depending on the work and circumstances.

Q: Don’t you think that this is a career suicide?

No. For the recruiters or similar professions maybe yes, but to me it is not. Because having more than one tool in your pocket is always an advantage. Learning different things can make you gain different perspectives on things so these kinds of moves are far from being a career suicide.

Q: What about Java/Jakarta EE/Quarkus? Will you be still contributing to the communities by creating content, giving speeches, and doing workshops?

Absolutely! I will continue to write about Java and Quarkus-related stuff, create videos and workshops and speak at Java/Jakarta EE conferences.

Q: What about Apache Kafka?

I like Kafka and it’s my niche technology that I’ve been specializing in. I cannot and will not stop creating content for it. Even if I am moving from the Strimzi team, I will continue to work on my Strimzi CLI project, continue to write about it, and record videos for it. There are many articles and related video content in my queue to be created and released. So stay tuned!

Q: Any plans on writing about Ansible/Ansible Lightspeed here?

Ansible will be my second niche for sure so why not! I like the technology and its control on any system so thinking this site’s name is “System Craftsman”, that would be a pity not to include Ansible-related content here. This can be thought of as the System Craftsmanship: Software Craftsmanship in the Cloud Native Era article’s theory can come into practice from now on.

Do you have some other questions? Feel free to ask me by using the comment section below, or just wish me luck with my new journey in lightspeed:)

May the Force be with you!