It is day two of National Coding Week! Similarly to our front-end developer post, we’ll be sharing some of the thoughts of one of our Minders to show you how they started, the skills they’re proud of, and the tech they enjoy using.

We hope this inspires businesses and individuals to continue advancing their skills within the tech industry.

Today we are chatting with Michal Pochowski, a highly experienced Backend Developer at Mindera UK — a rapidly expanding software company situated in Leicester city centre.

How did you get started as an engineer/developer?

“I started as an engineer/developer when I was about 8–9 years old by playing with some plain HTML and creating simple games in a game-maker application.

“I started to take becoming an engineer/developer more seriously when I was 17 years old, mainly by reading some books about Java and writing programs.”

What technology/tools do you use to fulfil your potential in your role?

“I mainly use IntelliJ IDEA. IDE is great because it has everything integrated within it, such as Spring framework support, DB connection, code debugging, version control system, built-in terminal, HTTP requests tool, and many more.”

What programming languages/frameworks can you work with? Can you describe your experience with them?

“Back end: I prefer using Java due to a number of reasons such as having a clear syntax, it’s fully object-oriented, it includes functional programming, a great standard library, a huge community, and much more.

“For web development work, Spring Boot is one of the best frameworks that provides plenty of out-of-the-box features, such as security, dependency injection, ORM Repositories, etc.

“Front end: I prefer using the Angular framework, because it is very comprehensive with plenty of features, such as animations, reactive form, progressive web app support, observables by default, dependency injection, great testing libraries, and natural TypeScript support.”

If you could master one technology this year, what would it be?

“Artificial Intelligence — I’m currently learning all about it.”

What skills are required to be a successful coder?

“I think a successful developer should have conceptual and logical thinking skills, good attention to detail, good math and algorithm skills, but also a lot of patience.”

What skills are required to be a successful coder?

“I think a successful developer should have conceptual and logical thinking skills, good attention to detail, good math and algorithm skills, but also a lot of patience.” What advice would you give to people who are interested in a career at Mindera?

“I’d recommend buying some books about technology that you are interested in. It might be worth doing some research first This is because there are many technologies that are out of date and many technologies are very new (“Buzz words”) and often they turn out to be not-that-great in the end.

“For example, NoSQL databases are very much in fashion, but from my work experience, we very often found that SQL was better and that NoSQL has many drawbacks. They are great in some situations, but they are not golden for everything. So, it’s worth doing some research, asking some people, reading some not-technology-sponsored articles, and, based on that, choosing which technology/language/framework you want to learn.

“Apart from theoretical knowledge, it’s also very important to write some programs to practice skills learned.”

How do you achieve a work-life balance at Mindera?

“I think I’ve got a great wife that helps me a lot. Besides that, I belong to a great team full of awesome people.

“I have a longer commute than most people at the business. However, Mindera’s flexibility makes it possible for me to work on the train. From time to time I work from home, which is also very useful for me because I’m travelling from quite far.”

Interested in working at Mindera?

We have various vacancies available at Mindera UK. Check out our website to learn more.

Are you interested in our services?

We build high-performance, resilient, and scalable software systems to enable businesses across locations.