iTechnologist

Yes, that is my title: iTechnologist. So, what do I do? A lot of different things... Some people like to specialize, I like to de-specialize. What have I done so far? Let's see...

• Wrote a perl program that parses moreover.com's XML feed and use it to automatically update iTechnologist.com's Java, Linux, and XML news pages. It retrieves the XML feed from moreover.com's server, and parses the XML page (using the perl XML module -- which uses James Clark's excellent expat toolkit), resolves the URLs in the feed to get the real URL of the articles. It has a local cache that helps speed up resolution of the URLs. (My ISP has since told me that I can't run the background scheduler job, so I'll have to figure out a way to make the updates more automatic.... Hmmm..)
• Designed and programmed a recipe site (www.resepmami.com) using PHP and MySQL. The site is designed to support multi-lingual (currently supports Indonesian language, next will be English).
• Designed and programmed a template based site (to remain unnamed) using Java Servlet and SQL Server database. I really like Java, and now that JSP is maturing I'll probably dump my template and use Servlet and JSP instead.
• I currently work as an automated tester, mainly using Mercury Interactive's WinRunner and LoadRunner. I enjoy using these tools, though at times I wish they are more stable. My specialty (and what I enjoy), though is figuring out how the application that I am testing works -- and how to break them. I think my philosophy and background on development helps me a lot here. Who better to test an application than another developer? Anyway, I enjoy challenging my programming skills by seeing how far I can push a language. For example, I was able to use WinRunner's TSL language to implement a pseudo multi tasking environment to control multiple WinFrame sessions. At other times, I will be writing programs to test some of the applications under test: imagine, having to reproduce the functionality that the whole development spent several months developing in just a few weeks. He-he-he, and to find errors in their code!!! The JOY, the JOY!!! Lately, though, I spend most of my time doing load testing -- it's a lot more fun to see the server beg for mercy under the load of several thousands request.

Some people are confused when they find out my list of skill sets, and for those who care to listen I give them my secret: I just enjoy learning things! Everything that I know comes from learning, but there is a method to all of my learning: Always understand what makes them tick.

I got acquainted with programming when I was young, so structured programming was a no brainer (Basic was big back then... :-) ). Then in College I was introduced to Unix shell programming (csh, bash, ksh), C, C++ (which I still hate to this day), Object Oriented analysis and design.

Then I learned Java (salvation) on my own during my employment at ISOGEN. This is also the time that I was involved with SGML (and DTD), some more advanced regular expression (courtesy of Omnimark and Perl). I also learned to program in WinRunner's TSL while working on one of the projects there.

From that point on, I just start reading and learning stuffs on my own: HTML and XML (easy once you know SGML), PHP, more Java (this language just keep on developing like crazy, I love it!!), and some other stuffs that I'm not ready to put out yet.

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