The Post about Nothing, and yet Everything

Editor's Note: Blog post author, Perry Clark, is known among our customers and open source community as "the guy with all the answers." He is a true jack-of-all trades; the guy that can help with anything. Really. Anything! Perry joined xTuple 10 years ago when the company was young and looking for ambitious "jacks" (and "jills"). Over the years he's not only maintained that title, he's learned a lot along the way to expand his repertoire of amazing skills. It's been fun to grow with the company and see it come so far. There have been ups and downs — as there are in any entrepreneurial venture — but this team continues to stay tight-knit. Every year the challenges get more complex, the software gets better, and overall the "machine" is running smoother. And now Perry is seeing the next round of "young ambitious Jacks of all trades" join the team. This is his ode to the past decade in his endearing, self-disparaging style.

O(pen)MFG! The 10 Years Post.

Am I showing my age if I start my blog like a Seinfeld sitcom episode? Consider this my post about nothing.

Wow... 10 years...

Ten years ago, I ventured down to Virginia from my home in Connecticut. It's only a nine hour drive. I figured: sell my house, sell my stuff, move down the East Coast to Norfolk. No big whoop... right? But, some of that 'stuff' I really liked. On occasion, I still find myself searching online for some of those things that I sold. Namely, a 1997 ATK 260LQ — look it up. If you find one, ship it to me. Call it a 10-Year gift. (Thanks in advance! Friends for life!) Luckily, I don't need to replace the 1988 Firebird WS6.

Over the years, I've worked on implementing software and helping the sales team (insert salesperson bait-n-switch joke here)! I don't think I ever really said I was a Developer.

I've migrated the xTuple websites from Drupal to Joomla!/phpBB2 and mysql on the backend and back to Drupal. Read about the 2007-2008 Drupal-Joomla! debate on our newly launched Forums. Love the comment on that post! Now we're rocking Drupal on all of our websites, including the platform for our xTupleCommerce product.

In 2009 or 2010, we added cloud-enabled technology. Then came more Mobile-Centric development and a great flood of inventiveness, well — we learned a lot. A lot of really good things. A lot of new techniques. A lot of new habits formed... some possibly morphed into addictions.

We've added some pretty good features spawned from the discovery process. My point is this: In 10 years time, my job has changed from general IT stuff to Dev/Ops and IT stuff, too! DevOPs, CloudOPs, monitoring, deployments, replication, etc. I've learned much over the years, and I have had great mentors that have come and gone. Even after 10 years of being in this community, there is still much to learn! I still say "I am not Developer." Although I have a pretty hefty GitHub account, filled with nonsense mostly.

Thank you all for Ten Years, it has been my pleasure!