Rick Buczynski is a professional web developer with 8+ years of experience. He can be considered as a very active member of the Magento Community. In this interview, Rick talks in detail about his initial career, Magento development, Magento 2, and he shares his views about the benefits of Meet Magento for newbies.
Rick also explains the process which merchants should adopt when considering an upgrade of their stores to Magento 2. He touches upon his personal interests and personal life and shares some funny and interesting moments of his career. Rick’s advice to young developers is: “Most importantly, I learned to try again. To “fail fast.” To the young developer, I would encourage them to pursue relentlessly.”
Read on to gain wisdom from his experiences.
Cloudways: Rick, you started your career as a Systems Developer in 2004. What challenges did you face? Would you share an interesting experience with our readers about the valuable wisdom you gained from your career?
Rick: In 2004, you could say I was a baby of a developer. I faced many challenges. From the beginning, I was a “full-stack” developer, touching interface design using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript; on the backend, I was working with free-form PHP in any way that just worked. It was a far cry from the modern architecture we see in applications like Magento today.
But what I learned through that time was how to work hard. I developed web applications from scratch, working very closely with clients to rapidly prototype and deploy a product. In most cases the client taught me, as their requests constantly challenged me to think about how to translate a business need into a functional piece of software. Having a taste for taking nothing and making it into something became a very satisfying experience.
Cloudways: Currently, you are working as an independent web developer with a lot of years of experience. What are the common issues that you faced while developing? Share some tips with our readers regarding project handling.
Rick: One of the most common issues I faced while developing was not at the technical level. It was gathering business requirements and understanding a client’s vision for something that was the primary issue. If I could grab hold of that vision, then it became easy to pursue the means to solve problems along the way.
Apart from that, and maybe something personal for me, was the need to plan. I’m one for instant gratification and I often found that, like an artist whose hand wields a brush, I just needed to get my thoughts onto the canvas to see where the product would end up. While this made my starts quite epic and inspirational, because I lacked the foresight to solve problems, I would quickly run into roadblocks that discouraged me to the point of abandonment.
These were hard lessons. Eventually I got smarter, and saw value in planning, prototyping, and refinement as repeatable parts of the whole project. I then began to embrace those as part of my workflow, and saw how quickly I could advance toward the end goal without hitting so many roadblocks.
Most importantly, I learned to try again. To “fail fast.” To the young developer, I would encourage them to pursue relentlessly.
Cloudways: Magento is a very popular ecommerce platform. What are some useful features in Magento for front end developers? You are a Magento certified front end developer, what’s your advice for those who want to involve themselves in Magento?
Rick: Speaking to the latter half of Magento 1’s lifetime, it is really loaded with features for front-end developers. The support for Sass is a big win for modern front-end development practices. And, while many complain about its antiquated choice for Protoype as its JavaScript framework (versus jQuery), it truly is just as good in many ways. But I also believe that the design patterns of Prototype better align with OOP, making it a good bridge for front and back-end developers.
Last but not least is the layout XML system. This, like most of Magento, is a unique feature that gives a degree of control and consistency to front-end development which is truly remarkable. This, combined with the often extreme amount of division among template parts, makes Magento very flexible and predictable to the front-end developer.
My advice is to kick against the pricks. You’ll see the trolling messages on boards and social media jabs about Magento’s learning curve and “unnecessary” complexity. But what world of ours is complete with such hot air? I struggled for 6 months to understand Magento’s front-end architecture. But as I learned to bend my will to conform to it, I found that it became my companion before I’d ever consider it my worst enemy. I don’t have a love-hate relationship with Magento; about how many frameworks can one say that?
Plus, by 2015, we have archives of great resources written by those who have gone before us to plot out the path. There’s almost no excuse for us not to master this thing.
Cloudways: You are one of the most active members of the Magento Community. How has your experience been so far with the Magento Community and with the community members? How do you connect yourself in the community?
Rick: It’s all about the people. And like-minded people. When I started as a Magento developer in 2012, I quickly learned that there were streams in which to swim, where I could connect with other developers who taught me where to go.
Twitter was the best place for me to connect to others in the community. It’s really a hub for what’s going on, and has led me to countless valuable resources. Specifically, I learned to follow the big shots: Alan Storm, Phil “Winkle” Jackson, Marius Strajeru, Vinai Kopp, Ben Marks, Ivan Chepurnyi. Coming under the wing of those who laid a foundation has been enlightening, humbling, and an intimate experience.
Best of all, I’ve always felt that the people in this community are out to help each other pursue excellence. We may joke about “not editing the core,” but we’re also serious when it comes to aligning to Magento best practices. We’re aligned to the same goals, which makes me feel like I’m part of a team, even as some of us compete for merchant business.
Cloudways: Rick, did you attend Meet Magento New York 2015? What response did you see on Twitter regarding MM15NY from the Magento Community?
Rick: I was so excited to attend this year as it would have been my first visit. But alas, the week before I was on a mountain biking trip and broke my collar bone! It was very disheartening to have to cancel that trip. Like I said earlier, I feel very well connected to the community and had been looking forward to meeting up with people.
Twitter is really the place for Meet Magento hype. Following the team at Interactive4, who have helped to organize this event, has been a lot of fun. There was great anticipation from all interest groups who attended, and I’m sure it was a fantastic event.
Cloudways: In your opinion, what are the advantages of attending the Meet Magento conference for novices who want to involve themselves more in the Magento Community?
Rick: You’ll meet real people with real passions for what they do. For developers, it’s where you go to socialize with the legends of the community. Take that as a chance to stand before kings and to glean from their fields of knowledge.
Also, you’ll get to see what’s forthcoming, not just on the technological front, but also from the business end. As we all know, Magento has its intentions to be a profitable piece of software. With that said, you will have a chance at these conferences to see in what direction the business of Magento is headed. That’s really critical to consider when your career has a stake in it.
Cloudways: You have vast experience on the front end development side. Magento uses extensions and modules. Which five extensions would you recommend for each Magento web store to deploy?
Rick: I don’t like a lot of extensions! Can I say that out loud? If I had to recommend 5, and trying to stick to front-end use, they would be:
1). MageModal: a shameless plug for my own extension. Almost every front-end developer needs modals, so why not use something beautiful and tightly integrated with Magento?
2). Amasty Improved Layered Navigation: a very comprehensive extension to layered navigation that represents catalog filters in ways that merchants want.
3). Amasty Delivery Date: web shops with time-sensitive shipping options would frustrate your day without this extension.
4). MageWorx File Downloads: this one makes it really easy to add downloadable resources to product pages and order emails.
5). Aheadworks Color Swatches: if you are on an older version of Magento without native color swatch support, or need something more advanced, give this plugin a try.
Cloudways: Magento 2 beta is now on the market. There is a lot of debate going on about the compatibility of web shops with the new version. What would be your recommendations for those e-merchants looking to upgrade from 1.x to the new version?
Rick: Consider this a re-platform. There are great strides being made up to the general availability release which aim to ship Magento 2 with some built-in migration tools. Even so, the technical underpinnings are very different and will require a great degree of effort to move over in a way that retains appearance and functionality 100%.
I personally believe that merchants looking to upgrade, first do an internal review of their system and business needs, then pair those with what Magento 2 promises out of the gate (including available extensions) to see how it will fit their needs. While I have no doubt that it will remain the leading open-source e-commerce platform, major version changes are always a good time to re-evaluate your fit.
Lastly, it might seem like common sense, but be sure that your development team has been vetted for the work. As I said, Magento 2 is very different from version 1, and as such it requires a new set of skills to develop properly.
Cloudways: Let’s put Magento aside and talk about your interests. How do you spend your free time after work? How do you manage your family life? Are you able to achieve a work-life balance? Do you like traveling or are you an athletic guy?
Rick: I start every morning with a bowl of Magento. Just kidding. I’m definitely a family man. I have 3 kids all under 5 at this point, and I’m looking to build an army. Don’t forget that Magento 3.0 will also employ developers, so I have to think about its future workforce.
Balancing work and family is an age-old struggle for a passionate working man. While it may be traditionally accepted in most cultures that I make the money and work long hours to do it if necessary, that’s not where my heart is. What’s important is to pursue relationships, and first in your own family. Thankfully I have a very loving and patient wife who supports my work, but she also knows how to keep our relationship in check.
So I achieve a work/life balance with some help from those who care about me, and by being intentional to value relationships.
While I’m not the most athletic person, I’m always up for a challenging sport. As a kid I loved baseball, snowboarding, football (American), almost anything for which I could earn a reputation! These days, my attention has shifted away from sports, but you’ll find me at least several times a year doing something physically intensive for no other reason than to have fun.
Cloudways: Everyone has some inspiration behind their success. Name some people from the Magento Community who have inspired you the most?
Rick: I already covered this a bit earlier, but I’ll give the full list now: Alan Storm, Phil Jackson, Vinai Kopp, Kalen Jordan, Ben Marks, Alan Kent, Kevin Schroeder, Fabian Schmengler, Anna Völkl, Ivan Chepurnyi, Alessandro Ronchi, and Oleg Ishenko just to name a dozen! These people have poured themselves into the community for my benefit, and I am very grateful to them..
Cloudways: You are aware of our platform and know what we do at Cloudways. How did you find it? Share your views about Cloudways and our 1-click Magento installation.
Rick: I first heard about Cloudways from you! Your 1-click Magento installation was really impressive. I almost felt like I was cheating by using your provisioning interface. Within 10 minutes I had a fully-functioning Magento store on AWS.
One of the features I liked about it was the Git integration for deployment management built-in. I do wish it provisioned Magento with a different Varnish extension, but I very much appreciated that Varnish was installed at all.
Overall, I found the 1-click installation very easy to use, and the management interface was highly accessible. I would consider using Cloudways for my next project.
Abdur Rahman
Abdur Rahman is the Magento whizz at Cloudways. He is growth ambitious, and aims to learn & share information about Ecommerce & Magento Development through practice and experimentation. He loves to travel and explore new ideas whenever he finds time. Get in touch with him at [email protected]
