Prototype's team - Paulo and his career as Developer.

I'm Paulo Olayres and I'm one of Prototype's Developers. You could say it's my job to make our designers and clients' visions come true. Part of what I do is take popular enterprise-grade Content Management Systems (CMS) and customise them. It makes the website management a lot easier. I wish someone could do the same for the parking!

In this role, you need to know all the basic stuff like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, C#, .NET, NodeJS, Sitefinity, database scripting, and be familiar with popular libraries. That's the building blocks. But in order to excel, a bunch of other knowledge in other areas goes a long way. Tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Excel, and PowerPoint, when mixed with practical development know-how tends to make complicated issues a lot less easier to manage.

People won't be surprised to know that my favourite tools are Visual Studio, VS Code, Chrome, Photoshop, Illustrator, MS Paint (yes, that one), Notepad++, MS Excel, and most important of all, Bing err Google. But, in all seriousness, you don't need a computer science degree in order to work as a software engineer. Diligence and passion are far more important, as well as knowing how to pick the right tool for the job.

At Prototype, our days are pretty packed and I like to be organised. From the moment I hit my workstation, I check my email to see what new tasks have been assigned to me. The jobs are then prioritized according to their urgency and the amount of time it takes to complete them. After everything is organized to my liking, I start working on them one-by-one. Here and there, meetings will be set up to discuss issues or introduce new projects. And every so often, I squeeze in a few minutes to update myself on the ever-changing world of software development.

Staying up-to-date with the latest trends, seeing what's on the horizon and bringing the right ideas to the table for each project can make all the difference. What we do is about making human lives easier. As a kid, I became fascinated by how much computers changed our day-to-day lives and made them better. Becoming a developer was an obvious choice for someone who wanted to embrace the digital revolution. Innovations come along so frequently now though it's an entirely new landscape. Revolution maybe isn't the right word anymore. Evolution may be closer to what's happening in tech these days.

For me, it's a good day when I make a breakthrough on a project or, rarely, see the end of my to-do list. But the best days are when the car isn't three blocks away and I can slide out of the office and hit the road. It's okay though. I just stick on my headphones and listen to some audiobooks enjoying half an hour of gentle late afternoon heat.

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