“Magento has a huge community with many available resources.”
Dusan Lukic has vast years of experience in Magento. Currently, he is working in Space 48 as a Magento Developer and runs his own Magento learning blog as well. Dusan is also the Co-Founder for PHP Serbia, that holds local meetups for developers and community members.
In this interview, Dusan shares his thoughts about “Magento Growth” and why merchants should upgrade to Magento 2. He also shares his candid opinions about the current trends of Ecommerce industry in Serbia and what future he sees for developers of Magento 1.x. Find out more about Dusan in this interview 🙂
Cloudways: Dusan, you’ve been involved with Magento for quite a long time now. How did your career start? What were the biggest challenges along the way in your early career?
Dusan: I started as a Magento developer back in November 2011 in a company from Serbia. It was a bit challenging at start, but over time I gained more experience by working on many projects.
Understanding some concepts regarding how Magento works in general was one of the biggest challenges for me. It was difficult in the beginning but over time some things started to make sense.
When speaking in technical terms, my biggest challenge in those days was probably debugging some layout XML, luckily in Magento 2 that will be easier with XML Schema validation.
Cloudways: Currently you are working in Space 48 as a Magento Developer since 2 Years. What is the most common problem you face while development? In your opinion, Is Magento a popular ecommerce platform in Serbia?
Dusan: Yes, I work for Space 48, a solution provider for Magento platform. Over there, I mostly work on support and on implementing new features for our clients.
There isn’t an exact technical problem that comes while developing. Understanding business processes is something that most developers can improve on which would result in being more effective.
I don’t think that ecommerce in general is very popular in Serbia at the moment, however, it portrays great potential. I am also involved in development of one of the most ambitious ecommerce projects in Serbia – Takolako – that aims to be the biggest e-shop here with 250 suppliers and more than 40 000 consumer goods. Being involved on a project like that from the start means much for every developer.
Cloudways: Dusan, You are a Magento Certified Developer. What is your recommended learning platform for those people who want to become Magento certified? Tell our readers what are the advantages of becoming a Magento Certified Developer?
Dusan: Magento has a huge community with many available resources. Since I passed the certification test a while ago I am not sure what are the exact blogs that I learned from but I am sure that they are easy to find over the internet.
I wouldn’t say that being certified is a decisive factor in a career. It definitely is useful to have, as people will notice it and the best part about it is knowledge gathered while preparing for the test.
Cloudways: Magento is one of the most popular Content Management System (CMS) for developing ecommerce websites. What functionality improvements in Magento are more competitive today: Frontend features for customers or Backend refinements?
Dusan: In general, I think it depends on specific cases, possibly marketing teams would be more acknowledged about that. Definitely there is a huge number of skills that can be utilised in making Magento the right ecommerce platform.
Cloudways: What are your thoughts about Magento 2? Have you started store development on Magento 2? What are the features in Magento 2 you mostly like? As a Magento developer what are your expectations of Magento 2?
Dusan: Yes, among other things I also work for Fooman, where we develop Magento 2 extensions, so I had my chunk of experience with it.
Magento 2 is a huge step forward in my opinion. Automated tests and dependency injection are alone worthy of upgrade, at least from a developer’s point of view. Those two things alone are a good starting point for refactoring that Magento 2 really needs.
I like many features that were introduced, among them are XML Schema validation and plugins.
One of the things that I would like to see happening more is refactoring some of the old classes as some of them are really bloated.
Some people are saying that Magento 2 is hard to get started with and that it has a very steep learning curve which is true. On the other hand, application development with php has drastically changed since Magento 1 and that’s something that also has to be taken into consideration. I think that people that are using other frameworks will love Magento 2, because it has some of the things that are used in most of the PHP projects, such as Composer.
Cloudways: Magento websites are vulnerable to security threats such as content duplication, identity theft, credit card hacks, etc. How would you go about to tackle security problems facing your Magento websites? What’s your thoughts about Magento 2 security?
Dusan: I don’t think that there is a software that is 100% secure. Magento has it’s problems in this area that’s for sure, but one thing I like about the application is that people that work at Magento were really transparent about it and came with a patch rather than leaving customers with a vulnerable software.
Cloudways: Let’s talk about Magento events like Meet Magento, Imagine, and Magento Live. You attended Meet Magento Switzerland 2014 (MM14CH). What’s your experience of this event? Do you think these type of conferences help Magento developers reap some advantages? How has your experience been so far with the community members? 🙂
Dusan: Yes, I have been to some Magento conferences. The company I work for, Space48, are co-organizers of a conference called MageTitans in Manchester. Those events are a great opportunity to meet new people from the community, share experiences and hear some interesting talks. I would recommend it to anyone that is involved in Magento in any way.
Everyone in the Magento community is really supportive which is great, I had nothing but awesome experience with anyone from the community so I would encourage people to take part.
I am also one of the co-founders of PHP Serbia which is a local PHP user group. We do great stuff, such as monthly meetups, discussions and conferences with leading people from the PHP community. We have a great conference here at the end of May with some of the most influential people in the community like Sebastian Bergmann and Phil Sturgeon.
Magento community is also getting started in Serbia, we are having the first Meet Magento Serbia conference in June, where I will present about integration testing in Magento 2.
Cloudways: On the lighter side of life, what do you do other than development? Can you tell our readers bit about yourself? 🙂
Dusan: Sure, first of all I like sports, going to the gym and running are my favourite activities. From time to time I like to read books, mostly related to history. Spending time with friends and hanging out over a beer is also a good way to relax from work for me.
Cloudways: We all have some influencers, who inspire us with their work or their quotes. Name people from the Magento community who have inspired you the most?
Dusan: There are so many people that did awesome stuff in this community that I am sure it would be unfair to name one or a few. If I must name someone, it would be Alan Storm, whose blog was extremely helpful when I got started and it still is.
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]
