This document discusses the many considerations and options one faces when choosing technologies to work with as a software developer. It notes that there are hundreds of programming languages, frameworks, libraries, tools, services, and processes to select from. It advises picking a language to start with even if not the best choice, contributing to open source projects, and gaining experience through side projects. It emphasizes the importance of evaluating options for community support and avoiding circular dependencies. It also highlights that technology choices impact configuration, deployment, licensing and other development factors.

1. M a r c h 1 4 t h , 2 0 1 8
G R A D U AT E S G O N E M A D : I N N O VAT I O N S I N S O F T WA R E
A l p e r K a n a t , S o l u t i o n A r c h i t e c t
a l p e r . k a n a t @ c o m m e n c i s . c o m

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Language
• Which one should I learn first?
• Which one should I learn to do X?
• Can I work with this language in my city? How many
companies/opportunities do I have?
• Is this language still relevant?
• Company X uses this language, so why shouldn’t I?
BASIC LISP LUA PASCAL PERL PYTHON JAVA ADA C PHP D
JAVASCRIPT RUBY ERLANG C# C++ F# HASKELL COBOL E
FORTRAN SWIFT OBJ-C VB SMALLTALK SCALA GO KOTLIN
• 100’s of languages if not 1000’s!
• Pick one even if you make the worst decision!
• Develop your own web site, your own game, your own library!
• Listen to podcasts, read articles, blog posts!
• Make the most out of your internship even if you’re not obliged to!
• Übung macht den meister! J

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Language > Framework
• A new framework is created almost every day!
• Framework X may not exist next year! L
• Don’t let populism overrule your decisions!
• Pick wisely or you’ll suffer. (probably not just you)
• Be part of the community and always seek for opportunities to
contribute!
DJANGO SPRING RUBY ON RAILS EXPRESSJS GWT PLAY
ZEND FLASK ANGULARJS REACTJS BOOTSTRAP AKKA
SYMFONY LARAVEL CODEIGNITER XAMARIN IONIC JSF

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Language > Framework > Libraries
Most of our code bases are now a mash up of 3• rd party libraries
Is library X acDvely developed or abandoned?•
Most libraries are hard to configure and usually don’t have a•
proper documentaDon
Who reads the Release Notes anyway?•
Enter circular dependencies!•
JDBC HttpClient Swagger Jackson JWT OkHttp pillow
ObjectMapper KingFisher requests BeautifulSoup
SASS Nokogiri Capistrano VueJS CardJS KeyStone LESS

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Language > Framework > Libraries > Tools
• Tools constantly evolve and it’s hard to keep up.
• There are different tools for the same task but each has its own
pros & cons
• New tools may seem to improve your abilities but this
eventually takes a lot of time to adapt & adjust.
maven gradle webpack npm yarn bundler brew apt
github jira eclipse gulp IntelliJ IDEA vim pip emacs
vagrant virtualbox grunt ant jq nodenv pyenv tmux
• Sooner or later you’ll discover things like oh-my-zsh and have
your own ”dotfiles”. J
• Look for open source standards such as editorconfig
• Avoid installing tools directly on your OS. Use tools like
Virtualbox, Docker and vagrant instead.

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Language > Framework > Libraries > Tools > Services
Each new service means more configura>on, more deployment•
considera>ons, more restric>ons.
You need to know everything about your selec>on of services and•
read through their documenta>on.
Environmental restric>ons greatly impact your service selec>ons.•
Licensing/pricing condi>ons may hurt.•
hazelcast elasticsearch couchbase cassandra hadoop
hdfs spark docker logstash mysql kibana rabbitmq SNS
lambda dynamodb zookeeper memcache redis firebase
• There is no silver bullet!
• Look for community support (forums, blogs, events) and help
others!
• Participate in hackathons and contribute to the upstream if
possible.

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Language > Framework > Libraries > Tools > Services > DevOps
• Not all companies have separate DevOps teams, you may find
yourself in this situation where you have to manage everything
yourself
• Choosing your tools & services is cool. But what about its
configuration, deployment and scalability?
linux http bash nginx apache varnish haproxy GCP
bind dnsmasq AWS zsh Azure docker CloudWatch SSH
nagios systemd ECS SQL LDAP Kubernetes firewall
• Every cloud comes with its own unique solution to a certain
problem.
• Cloud is relatively easy. How do you manage these on-prem?

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Language > Framework > Libraries > Tools > Services > DevOps > Processes
• Thankfully, most companies have onboarding sessions planned
upfront.
• Every company has its own unique way of managing processes.
Some do pair programming while others prefer regular code
reviews.
• Code Review is useful for understanding a company’s code
styling and daily practices.
code review CI deployment kanban sandbox jenkins QA
semver gerrit documentation wiki Postman swagger
scalability scrum code style pair programming licences
• The flow your work goes through from a single line of code to a
released package is often called “the pipeline”. Together with
the QA processes, it defines a developers requirements and
guidelines.

9. THANK YOU!
Q u e s t i o n s ?