Allow me to present…

I joined the TenTwentyFour team as a junior developer back in August 2016, having only just completed a 3 months internship at this very same company that I now call my second home.

Having been as busy as a bee over the last couple of months, both at work and in private life, time has flown by quicker than ever. Hence I have been delaying many things and it is only now I have been able to allot some time to sit down, write and post to the company blog. This short post has the goal to both formally introduce myself to you as well as to tell you a little bit more about how I both experience and perceive the company I now work at.

So without any further delay let’s start with a little bit about myself…

ευπρόσδεκτοι να TenTwentyFour¹⁰²⁴

I adore learning new things, and this trait isn’t strictly limited to the Information Technology domain.

So, as far as languages go, I haven’t just been buffing up my skills in PHP and JavaScript but also in Spanish and recently took up the challenge to learn some Greek. So if you have ever been wondering why some Greek letters and words have been sporadically popping up in my notes, that’s just me trying to make my brain get down with the Greek alphabet, vocabulary and sentence structure.

I often find that being actively curious and eager to dive into new and unknown territory is a nice trait to have, especially in IT. A field where everything is constantly changing, frameworks coming and going and client expectations evolving at the same pace.

Staying up to date with the latest developments and new software releases is a key element to succeeding in IT, something that – luckily for me and my colleagues – is both recognized and honoured here at TenTwentyFour¹⁰²⁴. It’s the reason why we actively support our team members to participate and engage in continuous learning and training opportunities. Be it by either providing IT literature, discussing and debating new trends, or by sponsoring the attendance of related conferences, meetings or community events, the possibilities are manifold and the choice is up to you as an employee.

FLOSS, MEAN, and more…

I started off my first few days at TenTwentyFour¹⁰²⁴ with getting the opportunity to join David and Gilles in travelling to Sankt Augustin in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Here we followed the various talks and workshops of the 12th edition of FrOSCon, an annual conference focused on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), its community and developers. Spread over two entire days, the conference offered me, most notably among many different impressions and insights, an introduction to Microsoft’s rxJS library and the specification pattern as implemented by the RulerZ library to organize and simplify the building of complex data queries.

FOSS is given particular attention here at TenTwentyFour¹⁰²⁴, something I already noticed during my internship at the company and a passion that I share with them.

As a result of this, I have used many FOSS libraries and tools in my daily work as a developer at TenTwentyFour¹⁰²⁴. Among many other tasks, I was asked to take over the development of a MEAN-stack based website, a handful of WordPress Plugins as well as the maintenance of PHP projects. The later including younger applications build on top of the proven Silex Micro-Framework and older legacy code bases, each with its own set of challenges.

As a means to help me dive deeper into AngularJS, I was further given the task to refurbish parts of an older single page application which was previously entirely written using BackboneJS. And as a additional bonus, along the way of all these assignments, I was also able to significantly improve my GNU/Linux command-line wizardry level.

Overall, the past few months at the new job delivered a good balance between challenging and skill nurturing work, and I’ve had a very pleasant experience so far. Something I hope to will continue in the coming months, so that I’m looking ahead at the challenges to come with great optimism.