May 26, 2015
Time to start Tuesday off right with a little chat with one of our programmers at SplitMango.
SplitMango: Welcome! Do you mind telling everyone your name?
Dmitry: Not at all. It’s actually an interesting question. At different times I was called different names. For instance the latest time when I worked for my former company Witkit I was called dV. You may ask why? Right, because I was the third Dmitry in the company. So to distinguish me from the other two we agreed upon “dV” – which are my initials. At SplitMango I’m Dmitry. My wife calls me Dima. And in my passport I’m Dzmitry, this is the traditional spelling from my homeland Belarus.
SplitMango: What’s your background in development?
Dmitry: I’m a software developer or programmer or engineer… I’m not sure haha. Something along these lines, probably all together.
SplitMango: What drew you to coding?
Dmitry: I started my first part-time job in web development on my last year in university and since then I can’t imagine my life without coding. I was involved in a couple of open source projects and did a few of my own projects as well. I remember the days when IE6 was a big deal and PITA at the same time, so much has changed since then!
Since I’ve got a computer my first year of university I wanted to be a programmer. They taught us Delphi. Nowadays just a few people know what it is. Back then Pascal (Object Pascal and Delphi environment in general) was one of major educational programming languages along with C and BASIC. But I never found a practical usage for my knowledge. Until I realized that you can open a plain text editor, write down some tags, open this document again in a browser and voila, it works without the need to resort to a special builder inside a special IDE.
This was something outstanding back in those days! Then came PHP. It didn’t look like a habitual programming language — variables and conditional statements right inside the html code. Then was MVC, my first love — Zend Framework, design patterns, databases, linux and on and on. Being a software developer is a never ending educational process.
SplitMango: It definitely is! How long have you been working at SplitMango?
Dmitry: 6-7 months.
SplitMango: What’s your favourite thing to do when you’re not coding?
Dmitry: I box. 3 times a week my life is filled with pad work drills and sparrings. This is very exciting. I know a lot of people think that boxing is an entertainment for the poor where two men try to bash each other. This is one side of the coin. But here’s another. It is a complex duel full of analyzing and maneuvers. You feel like a jet pilot when you enter the ring.
SplitMango: Very cool! Hey, if there was one thing you could change about the Internet what would it be?
Dmitry: To be in my head and everybody’s head so we can communicate without additional devices. Everything you need is implemented in your head from birth. There is a good episode of the Black Mirror about it called “The Entire History of You”. Where people have a “grain” implanted behind their ear that records everything they do, see or hear. This allows memories to be played back either in front of the person’s eyes or on a screen, a process known as a ‘re-do’. Not the Internet exactly but something you can pick up on the right direction of thinking.
SplitMango: Wow! I love it. Well, thanks so much for chatting with me, it’s been great getting to know more about you.
Dmitry: Anytime.