Full-stack developer, automation enthusiast, mentor, avid gamer and motorcyclist.

If one sentence could sum me up, that would be it probably. Each one of the above nominations has at least some requirements you need to meet to be counted as one. Hi, my name is Alex Izmaylov and I am...

A full-stack developer: or at least I am learning to be one. I've been getting more and more interested in programming in the recent years as I have become more proficient in automation and scripting for my daily needs as a Systems/Cloud engineer. In 2024 I finally decided to take the leap of faith and joined Dev Academy with the purpose of formalizing my self-education a little bit and gaining skills and knowledge that would be difficult to procure on my own. This blog and future portfolio site is part of my learning process for a new career that I think I will enjoy as much as all of my previous endeavors.

An automation enthusiast: I always enjoyed tinkering with things as far as I can remember myself. Ever since I got into my IT career, my first step in any new job would be to understand what needs to get done, and filter out what I need to do on a regular basis. My next step would be to streamline and automate the tasks that can be automated. What does a systems engineer do at an MSP daily? Build computers for customers, deploy servers, fix services and minor issues. I scripted my first computer deployment and saved three hours of manual labor per device, saving hundreds of hours of my time for other tasks on my first job, and have been doing this ever since. I automated service and device monitoring with custom scripts that could monitor things that were not designed to be monitored, unless you acquired an expensive piece of software, which would be overkill for the tasks at hand. Over time more and more tools, small and large, started to appear that were capable of doing some of those things, but custom automation will always have a place in my heart and daily effort in those niche places where third-party tools will be too cumbersome. Laziness is the driver of progress :)

A mentor: I enjoy teaching others and myself. I always welcome questions and I believe there are no stupid questions. Curiosity is a blessing that drives us to learn new things and grow as a person, impoving ourselves and reaching new heights. I love helping others where I can and guiding them where I can in the right direction, without necessarily giving an answer on a silver platter. Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day, teach him to fish and feed him for a lifetime.

A gamer: I enjoy games as much as the next guy. I played my first game when I was about 5 years old, it was a really basic game about a bear jumping across ice floes to reach land. I do not remember the name of the game anymore, but I was fascinated by the images moving on the screen according to my command, the mechanics of the game and the problem solving you had to do on the way to the goal. I have kept this fascination to this day, and although now, having taught myself some C++ programming and built a few small games, I have a much better understanding of how it all works, it still brings me joy taking apart other people's work, learning the rules that they implement and solving the puzzles that they came up with. I also enjoyed tinkering with their games where possible, sometimes fixing annoying flaws, sometimes adding new content. One of my proud achievements was a small AI behaviour mod for a game called Stellaris. My little module gathered over 15000 downloads, and served as a foundation for several other modders to base and integrate their work with.

A motorcyclist: I am not a gambler, but I like taking calculated risk, and motorcycling is probably one of the few things that are risky by default, but you can always improve your odds by consistently training and upskilling. Riding a motorbike pumps your adrenaline, sure, but what I enjoy the most of it, is going for a ride on a nice sunny day, getting into the flow of the road, the precision of how the bike reacts to your inputs. The community that is "motorcyclists" is nothing to scoff at either. It is one of the friendliest groups out there that you can find, always greeting each other on the road and willing to lend a helping hand where necessary.