You told us you want to know more about the people behind your projects. You got it. This is the latest profile in that series.
Name
Kevin Baker
Title
Developer
How do you help clients?
I focus on gaining an understanding of our clients’ unique business domains and processes before writing any code. That's the key to efficiently delivering custom software with the right features at the right scale.
Tell us about your background or training.
I studied American history and literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio. I eventually turned my interest in technology into a career, first as a systems administrator and then as a software developer in settings ranging from small nonprofits to Fortune 100 enterprises. I have a lot of experience with enterprise integration/middleware development, but I've worked on all kinds of systems and projects over the past 20 years.
What is your work mantra?
Make things as complex as necessary, but as simple as possible.
What are you reading?
Chronicles of a Liquid Society, a collection of essays by the late novelist Umberto Eco. I've also been slowly making my way through historian Eric Foner's Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution.
Whom do you follow?
My "follows" are mostly related to my hobbies, so: a bunch of YouTube channels about gardening or cooking, and a bunch of Instagram accounts focused on photography, painting, and drawing.
Where do you see the field going in 1-3 years?
"Serverless" and low-code offerings from the big cloud providers will continue to make software development less a matter of writing reams of gold-plated code and more a question of selecting and composing the appropriate components based on careful analysis.