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Optimize with a SATA RAID Storage Solution
Range of capacities as low as $1250 per TB. Ideal if you currently rely on servers/disks/JBODs
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Matt Heusser: You self-identified as a Java programmer going way back, but when you started at Zappos, they were a Perl shop. In the time since, the company has transitioned back to Java. What was that experience like? What did you learn?
William Weiss: I relearned Perl for one thing. I also learned that I am not a very terse Perl programmer. In fact, my Perl code tends to look a lot like Java, pretty verbose. I take my hat off to those masters who can write an entire program in one line of Perl. In the words of Wayne and Garth: I'm not worthy!
Overall, I'm very grateful to my very patient colleagues that helped me comprehend the existing codebase and made my work a success during those early days.
So, I was pretty happy to be playing in the world of Java again when I was moved over to work on some of our search capabilities with Lucene.
Matt Heusser: What is it like working at Zappos? What is your favorite part of the company culture?
William Weiss: Loud. Seriously though, it is constantly evolving. I feel as a company we work really hard to try and retain the sense of fun despite the fact that we are growing. It makes for an interesting mix of trying new technologies / in-office parade / solving the hard problems / happy hour down the street / hit the release date. In short, working at Zappos keeps you on your toes. But don't get the wrong idea. While Zapponians may play hard, we work hard too. A great deal of effort is put into ensuring code is robust and scalable.
If you can be passionate and determined in what you do for a living every day, then you don't have to go to work anymore -- you're going to play.
A great part of our culture in the technology department is that we are always exploring. In fact, we are actively designing with freedom to try new things in mind. Design the system interactions in such a way that we are not tied to any given technology. This always gives us the option to change when a better way comes along.
The 10 core values at Zappos have been covered a number of times in various articles. I'd have to say the part of our culture nearest and dearest to my heart is "Be Passionate and Determined." Working at a company that encourages this is priceless. If you can be passionate and determined in what you do for a living every day, then you don't have to go to work anymore -- you're going to play. I love what I do, I'm passionate about writing the best code I can, and I'd do that even if nobody paid me for it. I have to admit that this is one of the key things I look for when speaking with job candidates. Is this something you love, or is it something you do for the money? If you love it, you will strive to excel and learn all you can.
Matt Heusser: What is new and exciting in the world of Java?
William Weiss: I'm not sure that these would be considered "new," but they are definitely exciting to me and I'm just getting a chance to really get my hands dirty with them: First, projects like GWT and Echo3. Yes, they are vastly different architectures, but the end goal is similar: make it easy to create your app's front-end in a programmatic fashion. Combine that with Jetty and you can pretty quickly iterate through development.
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