Steve Vinoski's Blog

Welcome to my new blog! When I left IONA, I figured it would be just a month or two before I could return to blogging. I guess it took a little longer than that, though, given that seven months have already gone by.

Many have asked what I’ve been up to for the past seven months. All I can tell you is that I can’t tell you. :-) I work for a startup in Westford, MA, USA, in an industry that’s totally different than the one I used to work in. On the surface it might seem daunting to leave an industry where you’re kind of considered an expert for one in which you’ve never worked before, but at the end of the day, software is software, and expertise extends farther than you might think.

One thing I can tell you is that I am having a blast. The team I work with is experienced and very strong. We’re all old experienced enough that egos are largely left out of the office, so many of the typical bikeshed problems that plague groups of developers just don’t seem to happen. Well, OK, some do :-), but they seem to get solved quickly. In general, though, a lot seems to get done very quickly and at a very high quality. It’s hard work, and my days seem to regularly extend to 16-18 hours, but that’s exactly the type of situation in which I thrive.

The best part for me, though, is getting to work in multiple programming languages on a daily basis. Too many shops in the enterprise integration and web services world I left behind just want to write everything in Java. Zzzzz…snore. I never really warmed up to Java because I find it totally boring. To me, it’s like C++ with the fun bits taken out. If I want to use a C++-like language, I’ll use C++. OTOH if I want a language other than C++, then I want it to be very different from C++. You know, things like Python, Ruby, and Erlang, and of course the requisite Emacs-Lisp hacking that one is wont to do.

But more on all that, and various other topics, later. I should have a reasonable amount to talk about over the next while, as I’ve learned a lot by switching industries. Until then, thanks for welcoming me back into your news feed.