From .NET to JavaScript: Vasyl Boroviak on Becoming a Full-Stack Developer and Using WebStorm
We‘re continuing our series of customer interviews. This time, we talked to Vasyl Boroviak, a full-stack developer who has been using WebStorm for the last few years. Vasyl told us about his journey from .NET to JavaScript development and explained what he likes about WebStorm.
Hi Vasyl, can you please tell us a little bit about yourself?
For the last three years, I’ve been working as a full-stack developer at an Australian startup that helps make international money transfers cheaper and faster. The startup is quite small, so every employee, including myself, has to wear multiple hats. Apart from being responsible for everything happening on the backend and frontend, I do a lot of work with security, the network, databases, and infrastructure. I have a couple of contractors helping me with some tasks, but most of the work is on me. This is the fourth startup I’ve worked for. At my last three jobs, I did pretty much the same things and also worked with JavaScript.
What is your current technology stack and what types of projects do you work on?
We use JavaScript pretty much everywhere. I’m currently involved in a number of projects. Five of them are frontend, with three being Vue.js and two being a mix of Bootstrap and jQuery. On the backend, we mainly work with Node.js, Express, and Connect. As for databases, we use MongoDB and a few others. I think that’s it. Of course, it’s not an exclusive list and we also use tools like npm and Git.
Is WebStorm the first JetBrains product you’ve ever used?
No, I had used ReSharper before, which I was introduced to in 2007. I’ve also used TeamCity for a while.
And how did you transition from .NET to JavaScript development?
Throughout my career, I’ve been constantly looking at various technologies and assessing what they have to offer. About 7 years ago, I discovered Node.js and the JavaScript language. The ideas behind it were like a breakthrough for me. First of all, I liked that JavaScript had the event loop, which no other language had at that time. Second, the fact that the language is dynamic meant that I could write complex things with much less code. With C#, for example, it would take many more lines of code to do the same thing. Finally, I liked npm as it had everything I needed at that time and it was simple to use. So, long story short, I assessed JavaScript and what it could offer to me, figured it was going to be the next big thing, and then switched to it.
Did the fact that you had used ReSharper somehow affect your decision to choose WebStorm for JavaScript development, or was it something else?
No, it didn’t. I tried a few other solutions that were available on the market at the time, and I found that WebStorm was the only one that could debug JavaScript line by line. To me, it was crucial because I was doing a lot of debugging, so I chose WebStorm.
Then I actually tried Atom. I used it for a few months but dropped it. Then I tried VS Code, used it for a few months and again, dropped it too. They both had the same issue, which was very important for my productivity. With Atom, I was wasting a huge amount of time on managing plugins, like half an hour every day. I was spending time ensuring that all plugins were consistent and stable, and that was insane. The same, but to a lesser degree, happened with VS Code. I wish I could use the defaults and it just worked. WebStorm lets me achieve that, and I value the time it saves me.
Having used WebStorm for several years, what would you highlight as the key benefits? Is it still mainly about debugging and the time you save on plugin management?
I can add to this. First, throughout the years I’ve learned that the Git experience that WebStorm offers is just the best on the market. It’s friendly, efficient and feature-full. It’s insane how easy it is to work with.
Another thing I like is how simple it is to do unit testing. Debugging tests and setting breakpoints with a condition are just a couple of things that I can do faster with WebStorm. Finally, I like WebStorm’s TypeScript integration, specifically, the debugging experience.
Thanks! Do you have any favorite shortcuts?
That would be the shortcut for finding the next occurrence (Cmd+G/F3), the one for opening and closing the Terminal tool window (the default one is Alt+F12 but I use a custom one on my Mac, Cmd+T), and the one for going to declaration of a symbol (Cmd/Ctrl+B or Cmd/Ctrl+Click).
We’d like to thank Vasyl for taking part in this Q&A.
If you use WebStorm and feel like sharing your experience with us, please let us know by leaving a comment below or contacting us.
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