Starting with SilverStripe

So I have joined SilverStripe in a full time role as a core developer. It's a fantastic opportunity for me to apply my programming and design skills to a mature open source software project with a large group of developers, clients, and end-users. Up until now, I've worked almost exclusively with designers, and am growing tired of being the lone programmer in the corner making things work, so this opportunity arose at the perfect time, as I was looking for work in a more tech focused environment that emphasized agile collaboration.

This move might surprise some of you who are well aware of my vehement disregard for prepackaged CMS tools. Mostly, my opinions were a product of many painful experiences trying to fit square pegs into round holes and seeing how 'run out of the box' CMS products restrict design possibilities. Either my skills are better now, or the standard has simply improved, because for the last few months, I have been finding myself espousing a much more balanced viewpoint. My arm was further twisted in 2007 after wasting too much time fixing badly structured and incoherent PHP code inside messy custom hacked tools written by other developers. This turned out to be no better (if not worse) than the mess resulting from customizing a prepackaged CMS. Eventually I arrived at the realization that neither a good framework nor a CMS can protect designers and developers from badly thought out ideas. Good code promoting clear communication is vitally important, regardless of the platform. That might sound like - well, duh - common sense, but sometimes you have to get lost in the twisted maze of pathways before you can actually see the forest for the trees.

Since SilverStripe migrated to a PHP5 framework, I've been growing increasingly impressed with the architecture and general coding style that gels very closely to my own object oriented way of doing things. So making the jump into their company was a very natural thing, and my experiences have been very positive thus far. SilverStripe are one of the only technology companies in Wellington where I will be able to apply my full range of skills and ideas about web development and project management, and I'm looking forward to making a positive contribution to the continuing success of their product.