I spent about 2 years developing plugins in the WordPress wilderness. In that time I became proficient in plugin architecture, in how to structure and organize your plugin so that it is optimized for scaling and maintenance. As I enter my sixth month working for Automattic, my fascination with coding architecture and patterns becomes deeper.
One thing is clear: to thrive as a software engineer, it is of course essential to be fluent in many coding languages, but one must also be a connoisseur of application architecture. On a daily basis we work behind the scenes to create non-tangible architecture. And to me, it is most satisfying to see visualizations and hear descriptions of our work that gives our digital citadels a semblance of tactility.
This week, at the behest of some co-workers, I watched a few great presentations on react.js, a newly-released javascript framework from the folks at Facebook. I want to re-share those videos here as a reminder of how much has changed since I was strictly a plugin developer. Change is good. It is never good to get too comfortable as a developer. We are always looking for better ways to write code-poetry and build Fallingwater web apps.
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