It’s been a bit hectic at work in the last 2 years. Well, perhaps hectic isn’t the perfect word, but it’s close. Since I started working here, we’ve gone through two complete development technology stack switches.
Back in the halcyon days of 2007, I had the unenviable task of shoring up some very hastily written applications (by database developers and a couple of hacks who were here before me) using ColdFusion and HTML/Javascript. I beefed up the corporate offerings by implementing industry-accepted practices and patterns, used well-established libraries and got upgrades to the ColdFusion servers.
Then, in late 2008, the decision was made to scrap any future development of HTML/Javascript user interfaces and use Flex instead. That was exciting because of two reasons:
Fast forward to 2010 and now the entire company is rolling over to the .NET stack. Now I get to brush up on my rusty C# skills which I haven’t used in almost 4 years; I get to learn the ASP.NET MVC architecture; I get to have fun learning how to connect our .NET applications to our Oracle databases; lastly, I get to estimate how long it would take to convert our entire ColdFusion code base to .NET.
I’ll still get to work in ColdFusion from time to time, but .NET is the future…. for now. Perhaps 2012 will be the year we convert everything to Java!
I’m all for rolling with the punches and evolving my skill set to match what is needed for the organization to be successful, but I’m also no longer 24 years old with oodles of free time at my disposal (or the accompanying mental agility). Doing these massive switches takes a little more time at my venerable age.
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