Just wanted to post a quick (and somewhat belated) note about some work I’ve been doing the past few weeks, putting my ScalaCareers.com website back up and adding some new features.
Several years ago, I built it as an experiment with Lift. Then, some months ago, someone (there’s a really good chance it could have been me…) mistakenly shut down the VPS it was running on without realizing it. I tried to get the old codebase running again, but as it was depending on an old snapshot version of Lift, I couldn’t get it fixed very quickly, so I ended up deciding to rewrite it from scratch when I got some time.
This time around, I decided to build the site with Play 2.0, which was a fun experience. I’ll try to find some time this week to post some of my experiences from that.
Scala career outlook
I think the outlook for Scala-related employment is much better now than when it was when I first built the site. While it may never replace Java, it certainly has enough traction now that it is going to stick around and be supported for a while, and more employers are starting to use it and look for developers who are familiar with it.
New Authentication mechanism
I’ve begun to look for ways to avoid forcing users to create a username and password for my sites. Not only is it annoying for me to create all the functionality related to it, but requiring users to remember yet another username and password and exposing them to further risk that their password (which they likely use for a lot of sites) may be compromised (even though I’ve always used pretty good password management practices) isn’t ideal either. I’m also not a fan of forcing users to use Facebook to login, like a lot of sites are these days – not everybody has a Facebook account, and not all of those who do want it tied to everything they do on the internet.
So, I’m experimenting with JanRain, which lets users choose from a handful of OpenID providers. In my case, I’m allowing – OpenID, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Yahoo. I realize that still probably doesn’t cover 100% internet users, but I hope it is close enough that it doesn’t scare people away. I realize this isn’t perfect, but I think a long-term migration path away from people having a login for every site is worth some work and short-term pain. Any feedback or thoughts on this is appreciated.
Developer profiles
I know there are a number of folks in the Scala community who want to find some contract or full-time work doing Scala development, but may not be aware of opportunities. So, I added a developer profile section where developers who want to find work can post information about them and some links to show their ability (for example, it has sections to put your GitHub and StackOverflow accounts). This is pretty basic right now, but there is some potentially interesting functionality I want to work on if it looks like it is something people will use.
Feedback and suggestions are welcomed. Hopefully this site adds some value to the employment situation in the Scala community. If not, at least it was a good excuse to have some fun with Scala, Play 2.0, and MongoDB.
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