Meet our Geekstone Hero - Zoran Horvat

Our Geekstone Hero

Conference is all about people so meet Zoran Horvat and check out what he thinks about Geekstone, sharing knowledge, happiness and success:

1. Why do you consider sharing knowledge important?

Different people demonstrate different approaches to same problems, even when using the same technology. This is important because our goals are not always the same: we pursue performance, scalability, maintainability, testability. Different approaches shed light on some of these goals, contrasting the solutions against other ones. There is no single solution to a recurring problem. Sharing knowledge helps us see multiple options we have, some of which we haven't seen ourselves.

2. What meaning does Geekstone have for you personally?

Opportunity to meet more fellow programmers, different ones from those I meet every day. Every community comes with its micro-climate. Moving across community borders gives better insight and more ideas.

3. What makes you happy at work?

When we write actual code, code which will run in production rather than just serve as a demonstration, we make trade offs every step of the way. However clean and straightforward most of the coding and design guidelines are when isolated, they come clashing with each other in any large project. It looks like we are doomed to break good practices in our everyday work. But on the other hand, that is precisely what makes our day to day work interesting. Because we can break good practices in so many ways, we may spend many years searching for The Practice that we will follow. And even if we get close to it, by changing the target domain, by starting a new project or just by switching a job, the pursuit starts over again. Enjoying that pursuit is what keeps me in the business. I never repeat myself.

4. What is your greatest success?

Getting close to taking best from theory and practice is my greatest achievement in several occasions in the past fifteen years of my career. Programming theory is the foundation on which we base our business solutions. There will be no solution to business problem if we neglect programming theory, no matter how much we try. But on the other hand, practical coding is what brings food on the table. In more than a few occasions I had the opportunity to make peace between these two worlds and come out of a project meeting both goals: deploying the working solution in time and budget, while still keeping the design and architecture clean and maintainable in the long run. That is what I consider the Holy Grail in our profession. Sadly, not so many times can we really hold it.