Rab Horner came to software development later in his career, completing his degree with the Open University in his mid-30s. He has been actively working with .NET technologies ever since. This has involved everything from backend development to WPF and classic Windows Forms, but nowadays has expanded to microservices, modern web development in React, and even some exploration of DevOps tasks.
What does your typical day look like?
Most days in-office start off around 8am (start early, leave early to avoid the traffic) with two elements critical to success. A sausage roll and an energy drink! After this the working day usually starts with checking to ensure Production and the test environments are stable and issue-free. At 9.30am we have our daily standup where we discuss how our work is progressing and it also provides an opportunity to identify any blockers or where colleagues may need assistance. The rest of the day will be taken up by a range of tasks, typically this will involve writing code for whatever feature I’m currently tasked with. Code reviews are also on the radar, this is an opportunity to ensure contributions to the codebase are meeting in-house quality standards and coding conventions. Other critical tasks will involve planning for future work and for me, the most satisfying part, mentoring and assisting my team on any technical or domain-specific issues they encounter.
What are you currently working on?
Currently I’m working on a messaging project. This allows the end user to send a message into our system and off the back of that it will perform some financial tasks for the user. Quite a vague answer that, but I can’t give the specifics away here! Other recent tasks have included optimising code and freeing up performance bottlenecks to facilitate a better user experience. All very satisfying.
READ MORE: Tech Trailblazer: Carly Hegarty, Senior QA Analyst at TP ICAP
What inspired you to join this company in particular?
I wanted to get experience on enterprise level systems and around the same time TP ICAP were starting up in Belfast. I read up about the company and spoke to people who worked there and everything sounded really positive. Challenging work, exposure to numerous technologies and a great bunch of folk working there.
Did you always want to work in this industry?
I’ve had a keen interest in computers since I was a kid. A long time ago now this started with gaming on a Commodore 64 and manipulating these games to inject cheat codes. This involved writing small programs (copied from a popular computer magazine at the time) in BASIC, executing them and then reaping the rewards of infinite lives/ammo depending on the game. Unfortunately as I got older the lure of chasing money took over and I slipped away into working in the Civil Service, then manufacturing and finally back into where I should have been all along. Writing software and having a great time doing it.
What’s your favourite part about your work?
My favourite part of the work is around training and mentoring. Anything that makes life easier for my colleagues. It also helps being surrounded by like-minded and friendly people. The diversity of the work is great too. I’m not pigeon-holed doing the same tasks on repeat so it makes things much more interesting having to mix it up!
Who inspired you to work in this field?
A former colleague who was working here at the time suggested to apply and get experience working in Enterprise level systems. Initially it was quite daunting as it was a very different experience from my previous entry role. The level of automation and size of the codebase was huge in comparison so there was initially a steep learning curve. In the end it was the best move I made and here I am nearly 9 years deep in the role.
What do you consider to be the most important tech innovation or development in recent years?
AI and quantum computing are obviously big news these days so it’ll be really interesting to see how this all pans out over the next few years. Certainly in work I’ve been able to leverage AmazonQ to improve productivity and assist with boilerplate tasks. Personally I’m curious to see how AI and quantum computing can be applied to projects around renewable energy production, the removal of plastics from our oceans and generally improving everyone’s lives for the better.
How do you see this technology impacting our lives?
I see it impacting our lives in a big way. As bleeding edge technologies are developed, they will eventually filter down to our day-to-day lives as new applications for these innovations are discovered. I believe there will be noticeable improvements in healthcare, engineering and computing which will enhance our day to day living.
What tech gadget could you not live without?
Boring answer but I couldn’t live without my mobile device. It’s critical for all of life’s admin like banking, shopping etc. From a recreational perspective, it’s critical for new music, audiobooks, tech blogs etc. on the go. Most importantly though for keeping in regular contact with family and friends plus the odd therapeutic doom-scroll session!
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