New tools, new ideas, new job

So, after about 10 years of working for Roxit (called Syncera in the past) I started working for Tensing Safety & Security since november ’15. Besides being a bit of a shock to my former collegues, this is still getting used to for me as well. It’s been 6 months and whereas I was a fulltime developer at Roxit, my work here is totally different. Visiting customers, in the public safety domain, helping them to solve their (IT) problems. I think it’s really nice to work in a field that matters. I also like to see the customers actually having a lot of knowledge about our products and constantly trying to learn more about it. At the office, I sometimes get to open up Visual Studio (2010 iek!) to fix something or to add a small feature, but most of the time just checking, installing and configurating. Also, I started working with Esri software.

First of all, I have to admit that I really like the way Esri stuff works, once it’s installed & configured. Looking at it from a developer’s point of view, it really bugs me how much work it entails to actually have a working setup and the ‘inability’ to run everything from my own laptop. Ofcourse, I could, but it requires me to heavily invest in licenses. On that side, I’m more of a Microsoft kinda guy; you can make everything for next to no fees. (unless you want higher Visual Studio versions, etc) Then, when it’s time to go towards a production environment, somebody needs to cough up the licensefee.
With Esri, I feel I need to buy developers tools, a server, some extensions, just to be able to write a simple “Hello, Esri!” application. Ofcourse, that’s what an EDN license is for, but that’s pricey. So, from a developers perspective, I’m unable to develop things on my own. I will always need access to Tensing’s license server.

On the consultancy side of things, once the license has been set, the ArcGIS platform is just wonderfull and powerfull. Creating web apps with a few clicks, even building entire web gis sites can be done with an extensive toolkit. Most parts can be added too and Esri is also releasing a lot to GitHub.

So I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place: I like what Esri has done with their ecosystem, but I hate that I can’t really build with it on my home pc. Everytime I have an idea it’s being stopped because I have to pay up. So in my spare time, I am still developing using my OS GIS stack. For data conversions, I use my ArcGIS for home use license to try and keep my focus on one product suite. But I am looking to see what I can create with my developers ArcGIS Online account combined with a Javascript API. It might turn into something fun and hopefully inexpensive to create… Because… well… I’m still Dutch and I don’t want to pay too much for personal projects as they tend to take quite a lot of time to get completed. 🙂