How I became a professional web developer

How I became a professional web developer

Hey, everybody! There is a continuation of our interviews. Today we want to present our web developer — Erlan Aytpaev. We are going to talk about education, work projects and, of course, professional web developer’s habits. Enjoy!

Developer’s-story-Erlan Aytpaev
Web developer Erlan Aytpaev

Where did you study? Are you a mathematician? Do you apply knowledge received at the University somehow?

I studied at SIBADI (Siberian Automobile and Highway University) at the major “software engineer”, and now I work as a programmer. I think it’s connected somehow. :) We had wonderful professors who knew their disciplines very well, and this knowledge helped me a lot.

For example, databases — no website can work without them. We learned databases, optimization, so when I started to work, I didn’t have any problems, everything was great. Although, as in any higher education, there are additional subjects. I don’t know why they are needed — just for student’s busyness? I don’t want to offend anyone but philosophy and something else of this kind were only about just passing a test and forgetting about it forever. As someone told me — just for the sake of training student’s brains.

How did you find out about ADCI Solutions? How was your the first day?

When I was a 5th-year student I had a pre-diploma practice, so I didn’t want to waste my time, and I decided to look for a job. I found a vacancy announcement for an internship on one of the sites. I applied, then a test task was sent to me. Before that, I freelanced a little bit, so I knew PHP / JS / CMS. But I had never worked with Drupal; for this reason, I spent a lot of time on drupal.org studying the documentation before writing a test module.

On my first working day, I studied a lot of materials about Drupal (likewise the whole next month).

There’s a belief that programmers deal with everything that works on electricity. Have somebody ever told you: “Hey, you’re a programmer, fix this or that”? How was it?

No, I somehow avoided it. But I understand how any device works because I’ve been engaged in this since the childhood. Therefore, it wasn’t necessary to say “Hey, you’re a programmer” to me. I’m used to just taking and repairing something by myself.

Web developer Erlan Aytpaev
Web developer Erlan Aytpaev

Do you code something for Open Source projects? Do you code just for fun? Why are you doing this?

How can a web developer become better if he or she doesn’t code? If I want to learn something new, I should practice it. Not all technologies can be used immediately at work. And in the future, they can come in handy. Therefore, you need to gain experience now: this way when a task appears, you don’t study technology but solve this problem. I always try to read and practice something. There is no way to become a professional web developer without practice.

Do you write to music? Why yes? Why not?

I don’t like coding to music because the music distracts. But our office is an open space, and sometimes, if I don’t listen to music, I have to listen to the noise. And I choose music.

The first application/site/project. How did it all start?

I remember the first project at work. I was the 5th-year student, and after some training, I started working on the first project. It wasn’t too hard, I just remember this sense of responsibility that you were given a project and it’s “alive”, clients really need the project to be completed, and you feel an enormous responsibility. It affects you. It’s unforgettable.

Which project are you proud of?

I’m the proudest of the modules that we posted on drupal.org. Monitoring the usage statistics and issues which web developers send to us I understand that we have helped people. We have made something that many developers need.

If you had a time machine what project would you do differently, or maybe some of them you want to do again?

A web developer becomes better over time, learns something new, and grows professionally. Therefore, the code that he/she wrote yesterday always seems bad to him/her. So I would like to rewrite all of my projects. It does not mean that they were made poorly, I just think that now I could make them better.

And what are the professional developers watching? What was the last movie you watched?

I try to improve my level of English, that’s why I watch series on Netflix. The last what I watched was The middle, Flash, Luke Cage.

Finish the sentence: “I can not imagine my day without …”

I can not imagine my day without my phone or rather without the mobile Internet.

This is it, guys! The next interview will be posted soon!
Keep reading our articles and blogs.

Read other interviews with our team leads: 

"Hey, are you a programmer? Repair my microwave oven!" with Artyom

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