Book Image

Developer, Advocate!

By : Geertjan Wielenga
Book Image

Developer, Advocate!

By: Geertjan Wielenga

Overview of this book

What exactly is a developer advocate, and how do they connect developers and companies around the world? Why is the area of developer relations set to explode? Can anybody with a passion for tech become a developer advocate? What are the keys to success on a global scale? How does a developer advocate maintain authenticity when balancing the needs of their company and their tech community? What are the hot topics in areas including Java, JavaScript, "tech for good," artificial intelligence, blockchain, the cloud, and open source? These are just a few of the questions addressed by developer advocate and author Geertjan Wielenga in Developer, Advocate!. 32 of the industry's most prominent developer advocates, from companies including Oracle, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, open up about what it's like to turn a lifelong passion for knowledge sharing about tech into a rewarding career. These advocates run the gamut from working at large software vendors to small start-ups, along with independent developer advocates who work within organizations or for themselves. In Developer, Advocate!, readers will see how developer advocates are actively changing the world, not only for developers, but for individuals and companies navigating the fast-changing tech landscape. More importantly, Developer, Advocate! serves as a rallying cry to inspire and motivate tech enthusiasts and burgeoning developer advocates to get started and take their first steps within their tech community.
Table of Contents (36 chapters)
34
Other Books You May Enjoy
35
Index
36
Packt

Scott's path to Microsoft

Scott Hanselman: I was the chief architect at a company called Corillian that did retail online banking. I reported to the chief technology officer (CTO) and shipped a bunch of software called Voyager that ran about a quarter of America's retail online banking.

I built a big distributed system that was like Kubernetes, except that it was written in C++ and ran on Windows. I also wrote the .NET software development kit (SDK) wrappers around it, so I was in the open-source .NET community early on.

Then I helped to introduce open source to banks, which was challenging because large banks don't usually like open source. I had to deal with the General Public License (GPL) and others. This was in the early 2000s, so people were really tense about free and open-source software (FOSS) versus open-source software (OSS). We'd go to a bank and hear, "No, we don't want to have open source here because we're afraid that you'll have to make...