Beitrag von: Aura am September 20, 2013, 06:01:08 Nachmittag
I was pretty preoccupied with the API at the time, so I blame that on the poor handling of this interview.
To Prism's and Manifest's credit, they didn't actually say anything about those questions. I just didn't get any answers back. And since I do not like to pester anybody for answers, I let the matter be (they will answer when they can, me emailing them every week will just be an annoyance.)
I think now, not being so wrapped up with the API, I could have handled this interview more appropriately, kept questions focused on his job and the technical aspects, as well as talking about the role of both the API and CREST together. But that's not going to happen now.
Like the other unfinished interview, my subject was kind enough to spend his time answering questions. Since those answers were intended for a wider audience, it's only fair to get them to that wider audience. Keeping them bottled up in my inbox would be rude and disrespectful.
So, enjoy. Presenting CCP Prism X.
Who is CCP Prism X? Why are you a dude that works at CCP? What did you bring to the table that they saw as valuable to their overall team?
I was born on September 30th, 1983, and quickly given the name Unnar Steinn Sigtryggsson. Fifteen years or so after that historical event people started calling me Askur in reference to my IRC handle at the time, and that still sticks to this day.
I was always preoccupied with gaming of all sorts from a very young age. This was fairly problematic in my youth as there was a very limited supply of board games that had Icelandic instructions. It wasn?t actually so much an issue for me as it was an issue for my mother who had to learn all those games so that she could teach them to me. I think I was around nine years old when I bought the ?Escape from Zanzer?s Dungeon? D&D starter set and gave my mother a mild aneurysm by asking her to translate that for me. So that?s about the time when I started teaching myself English. And thus I was hooked on RPGs. Perhaps interesting to note that ?Askur Yggdrasils? is also the only Icelandic RPG game ever developed and it was developed by people I then met when I started working here at CCP.
To make a long story short that quickly branched into computer games as soon as I had reliable access to computers. I mostly played adventure, RPG and strategy games. At that point me and my friends had been playing RPGs for the good portion of a decade and had always wondered why nobody was making more ?open world? games. Some mix of Quest For Glory storylines and character progression with the versatility and immersion of pen and paper RPGs. Then Ultima Online happened. My life would probably be very different without UO.
Fast forward to when I?m sixteen-ish and sitting with my friend in his brother?s living room playing Metal Gear Solid on a PS. His brother comes home very excited over something. That something turned out to be EVE Online. This was a fairly pivotal point in my life as it was at that moment that I decided I?d be working for CCP someday down the line. A whole lot of time passed, I got myself a B.Sc. in Computer Science and found myself interviewing for an Assistant Database Developer position in autumn 2006. Later I was told I got through the initial screening because the Lead DB Developer liked my character and operates under the mantra that knowledge can be taught but character is a pretty permanent thing.
I always liked to think it was because of my burning passion for the game, the company and the industry as a whole, obviously shone through during the interviews. I certainly wasn?t hired due to my aptitude as a database developer. I was fresh out of university. But I quickly picked up a burning interest for the subject as there was a whole lot to do on that front back then.
Also I?m very verbose in my writing!
When did you first start at CCP? What is your history with the company (your various roles and titles)?
On October 16th 2006 I was hired as an Assistant to the sole database developer of CCP. Obviously I don?t do anything very fancy for the first few months other than read over code, get used to the development environments and do some very mundane mostly syntactical changes to code. If I remember correctly the first real project I got was fixing some off belt asteroids by moving them closer to the belts warp in point. Oh and the ?removal? of WTZ bookmarks. I say ?removal? because execution time constraint made the logic suffer so only most of them were removed. It was good fun and a great learning experience for me.
The first really challenging project I got was learning how our cluster startup works so that I could change it so that Jita could run on a dedicated node. I think it was shortly after that project was completed that I became a ?programmer?. But that was back in the day before we had the programming positions we have now. Apparently I was never really an Associate Programmer. I didn?t really care back then as I was working on the computer game I always intended to work on. Since then I?ve done various improvements to the cluster configuration, startup and load rebalancing scripts. That?s always been one of the more interesting areas of my job.
There aren?t many places in my history with CCP where I can definitely define myself into a certain role. I was hired as a DB specialist and for a good while I was one of two DB people within the company. That pretty much meant my attention was spread all over the place as I would be assisting with, and reviewing, other peoples DB development code as well as working for my own team/features and amending live DB issues. Even after we hired the third DB development specialist the company was still growing so rapidly that a lot of our time went into technical guardianship or live maintenance. Back in those days there was a lot of work to do on the production DB. Everything is much more stable and boring now. I really do miss the Cowboy Days? even though I assume most of our customers do not.
And now, almost seven years down the line, I?m a Senior Software Engineer. I still do specialize in database development but since the Cowboy Days? are over I focus much more on the project as a whole rather than just one little corner of it. I?ve overseen the EVE API, created new regions in New Eden and the entire Wormhole Universe, detailed a fair few processes we use during deployment, broken POSs in multiple different ways without ever touching the POS code, seen good friends and great minds come and go, removed the learning skills from the game, pitched multiple different designs that are rejected on the spot because they?re silly, caused a fair bit of forum rage as well as laughs and so on. All in all, I?m pretty happy with these past seven years.
What is your current job at CCP? What projects are you currently involved with? What have been some of your past projects with CCP?
As mentioned I?m a DB specialist and my current title was recently upgraded to a Senior Software Engineer. As a freshly minted senior I?m slowly settling into the role of general technical guardianship for my team. The DB specialists have always been tasked with the technical guardianship of DB code as well as any emergency responses to live issues. EVE Software Engineers are then responsible for EVE development. Personally I?ve then adopted leadership over the old EVE API. So my job is really quite varied.
I currently belong to Team Pony Express and mostly do technical work for them. The team is focused on improving EVE without any feature additions, In Odyssey the team?s biggest contributions are the new transitions (although many other teams had their fingers in that) and the new radial menu. My part in that was refactoring of specific client backend code as well as general research into how to approach the problem without risking any desyncs between the server and client simulations.
My past projects are numerous and, as I am a backend developer, many of them are not very end-user facing. I guess the most memorable and noticeable projects I?ve been a part of were the creation of Black Rise and all of Wormhole space, as well as the removal of the learning skills. However the most challenging (and thus fun) project I?m involved with is the cluster load balancer I mentioned earlier.
What has been your proudest moment at CCP? A particular project, perhaps?
The removal of the learning skills not blowing up in our faces with massive data corruption and massive customer outrage. Messing with you guys? skills is about as scary of a prospect as doing live updates on a Central Bank?s live database.
Which person (people) do you report to directly? Does anybody report to you?
Nobody reports directly to me. That would be a horrible experience for anyone. I do however have a say in things that concern my speciality. My most direct manager is CCP Sisyphus who is my Product Owner and thus my ?Team Manager?. I am however somewhat of a wild card in any team as my duties cover so much more than just development so I get pulled out of development by CCP Explorer on a regular basis to deal with live issues. But I don?t report directly to him. Besides, the chain of command does not take priority over operations of the TQ cluster. I?ll look at issues GMs bring me if I think they warrant it regardless of what Sisyphus says. But don?t tell him that!
What does a normal working day look like for CCP Prism X?
Show up at the office around 0800 AM for my morning coffee. Somewhere around that time I actually wake up and start reading over my email and posting some nonsense on social media sites. On a normal day I?ll have some development tasks or defects I?ll start looking at. On less normal days I?ll be franticly trying to get to the bottom of some live issue or writing up a solution to it. I like the less normal days more. Then there are complete edge case days where I sit down and start answering interview questions. That?s a new one for me!
Then I sing a lot during the office hours. I?m not really sure how people around me tolerate that but they seem to see the lighter side of it. I?m not a very good singer. I actually don?t sing. Real singers would get very offended if I?d call it that.
On a good day I get to do just that. Some days I spent half of the day in meetings or reviewing code from various sources. But ?meeting-hell? days are few and far between and considering that I used to spend a large portion of my day reviewing every single DB update that was submitted I can?t really complain over my current code reviewing duties.
So as this is the last question of this batch I?ll continue with my normal day and see if I Explorer and Veritas don?t want to have a little sit down about the cluster and why empire space seems to be a bit more thinly stretched, resource wise, than we?d like.
Why the name Prism X?
In the end that was probably a good thing because this story would be really lame if it was just some character from a comic that hasn?t been published in a decade. Also that portrait only existed for a few months as I decided to switch to a male portrait (left, bottom) before my first Fanfest and avoid potentially answering the same question over and over again. Because I didn?t have a good answer to it!
Maybe I should ask the NSA why they went for that name and copy their story. I?m sure their story is very engaging and interesting like a classic film noir piece.
Source: Getting To Know CCP Prism X: An Interview (http://)