These are the questions that can serve as a guide for the interview. You don't have to religiously adhere to them, though, so feel free to skip any or even come up with others you'd like to answer.
The easiest way for me to compose the interviews would be for you to fork this gist, add your name and your answers to the questions (right below each question) and send me the link to your gist.
- Could you introduce yourself in a few sentences?
Hi, I'm Michal Bryxí, or Míša. You might know me from EmberJS Discord, conferences or just the internet space. I'm quite a keen advocate of good UX, not blaming users for the faults of the IT industry and spending my time in any other way than at the computer.
- Which part of the world you are from?
Originally I come from Czechia, but I've been living in UK for ~7 years and now I'm based in Interlaken - Switzerland.
- When and how did your Ember journey begin? How did you learn about the framework?
Because I used Puppet (configuration management software) in my previous company, I thought it would be cool to start working for Puppet (the company). After I started they told me that they actually need me on some frontend project and I will be working with something called Ember. Right after I started, the company shipped me to Portland to attend EmberConf (2016). On the long way in the plane I was hacking away on what would become my biggest project using Ruby on Rails. But since it was a very long flight I thought I should give Ember a try to see if I can use it for fun projects & learn something for work. It was a perfect match and I'm happy to report that said app is still running without any major rewrite ever since.
- How did reading the Rock & Roll with Ember book help you? Can you recall something that you learned from it?
The basics. I'm not very patient person and I tend to jump from thing to thing when building something. Often times missing a lot of crucial details in doing so. Rock & Roll gives the end to end story and shows all the little pieces that come into play when building modern EmberJS application.
- What Ember feature/RFC/etc. are you most excited about?
Changes all the time to be honest. But I'm super happy that ember-data is getting a big overhaul as I consider it the most impoartant part for all my projects. Dropping custom build story and plugging into the vite world sounds super promising. And for the future I'm curious about dropping controllers and overhaul of the routing system.
- Other than reading the book, how did you learn to “speak" Ember?
Projects, projects, projects. I maintain few tiny addons which helped me understanding the -v2 addon evolution. I have tons of apps around that have their quirks and specifics. For myself, I deeply believe that I could not be where I am without working on "my" stuff outside the regular "work time".
- Is there something you’d like to see covered or explained in more detail in the book?
Short answer: Ember-data. I don't consider building an UI that displays stuff and reacts to user inputs that hard. As you can (mostly) dictate all the bits and pieces. But state mutation, persistence, updates ... that's something where a lot of things can go sideways.
- Are there any (side-)projects that you’ve built in Ember? What is it (are they) about?
- E2E Beauty Salon management solution: https://www.beauty-pay.cz/ (hello Phorest :)) (Been working on it on and off for over a decade and still going strong)
- Private location tracking visualisation tool: https://the-mountains-are-calling.netlify.app/?zoom=15 (Was built in ~two weekends)
- POC frontend replacement for live winds tracking: https://winds-mobi-client-web.netlify.app/map (hoping to replace the original Angular app) (Also probably ~2 weekends)
- Were there any challenges or stumbling blocks while you were building your app(s)?
The usual:
- Documentation
- Sometimes things are missing
- Sometimes links within the docs are broken
- Sometimes search in the docs is not working
- Sometimes you stumble upon DenverCoder9 comment
- Addons
- There are quite a few that used to work, but are deteoriating now
- Some addons have quite a list of PRs from folks, but nobody merges them for year(s)
- NullVoxPopulli is on vacation
- Then, I think, we all feel like our productivity goes down
- How much time do you have to work on that project (those projects)?
Added the information next to the respective projects.
- What do you like to do in your free time?
Trail running & Paragliding
- If people would like to follow you (or your project), where can they do so?
Right now I'm probably most active on my Mastodon: https://veganism.social/@MichalBryxi
- Is there something else you’d like to say?
I love folks from around EmberJS community. The love, patience, thoughtfulness and general community vibe. You are the best!
Also, it would be nice if you could link to a photo of yours but only if that's fine with you, of course.
Feel free to steal my mastodon avatar: https://sfo3.digitaloceanspaces.com/veganism-space/accounts/avatars/110/782/325/881/214/517/original/e92211a90bcf2856.jpg
Thank you!