Switched On: A Bowdark Podcast

Builders and the Developer Spectrum with Riley Rainey

Episode Summary

James and I spoke with the super-interesting Riley Rainey. Before you get to any of the regular industry-specific goodness we talk about, check out his GitHub repositories focused around replicating the Apollo Guidance Computer. I was tempted not to talk about anything in the SAP or development world and just blast on about nerdy space things. But we did eventually move on to things in the here-and-now, and it was great fun.

Episode Notes

Podcast Episode! Builders and the Developer Spectrum with Riley Rainey

James and I spoke with the super-interesting Riley Rainey. Before you get to any of the regular industry-specific goodness we talk about, check out his GitHub repositories focused around replicating the Apollo Guidance Computer. I was tempted not to talk about anything in the SAP or development world and just blast on about nerdy space things. But we did eventually move on to things in the here-and-now, and it was great fun. 

Riley and Episode Highlights

• At SAP for 8 years, past 3 in developer relations
• Studied computer science in school, jumped into financial modeling
• “Rambled around” in software from case management tools, to mobility, cloud, platforms, to developer relations — and others
• Built an open-source multiplayer flight simulator!

We coaxed Riley into this photo by pretending to be rocket scientists

• Kill a week — go find the NASA tech report server .
• From Riley’s perspective, pro-code does have an important distinction from citizen developers using low-code.
• The important thing is the guard rails set up in the citizen developer universe.
• All heads nodding in agreement: SAP CoE’s still largely isolated from other tech teams
• The promise is there for low-code tools to eat away at IT backlogs.

Money Quotes

Riley

Find a way to get out and do something different! You get exposed to different classes of problems.

A builder is anybody who is involved in the construction of software for other people. 

When you graduate to doing things for more than just yourself…the considerations become very different. 

Now we’re all citizen developers. Are we all citizen security people? Are we all citizen designers?

James

Figure out ways to bring the right teams together so everyone can play to their respective strengths. The community aspect is so important. [re: low-code and pro-code skillsets mingling together]

Paul

There are so many ways to produce so many software artifacts for so many different audiences.

The tools are ahead of the governance they require.