Behind The Code: Ola Money’s Developer Vishal Bhadade Believes MOOCs Aren’t Always The Best Learning Path

Over the years, applications and software have become an integral part of our day to day lives. And it won’t be wrong if we give all the credits to the developer behind the app for making our lives easier. But have you ever wondered how is it to be a developer?

In our new developer series “Behind The Code”, we got in touch with some of the brilliant minds from the developer community.

This time, we caught up with Vishal Bhadade, who is currently working with OLA as an iOS Developer for OLA Money, which is a crucial part of OLA cabs.

The onset

A B.E -IT graduate from Dr D.Y. Patil College of Engineering, Vishal has always been a software enthusiast. “I didn’t veer towards software development, I always wanted to be a Developer,” said Vishal.

However, the journey wasn’t easy for him — he was facing difficulty pursuing a career into development as he didn’t learn Java, .Net — and almost every IT company wanted those skill sets. But Bhadade had a strong hand on computer science basics — data structures, algorithms, operating system, computer networks and C, C++, and that landed him a job in GlobalLogic as an iOS developer where he worked for Verizon and Reliance.

Vishal’s Knowledge Resources

We all know that the world is marching rapidly towards mobility — we will see everything on mobile in the coming years. With the demand for software will also rise and only the ones with extensive knowledge of the software space will win the race. Therefore, it is imperative to keep updated with the latest trends.

When asked about how he manages to keep himself updated, Vishal said, “For me, it’s Apple WWDC and online blogs that help me get updates on the latest technology and trends. On the other technology fronts, it’s my peers from whom I get the updates.”

As Bhadade talked us through his developer journey, he shared some more things he does to stay relevant to the industry he works in. In order to brush up his skills, Bhadade participates in online challenges on Hackerrank, Hackerearth and Techgig. He doesn’t believe much in taking an online course as he feels that it won’t help in upgrading your skill set unless you dive deep into it.

Cloud Automation and Kubernetes

A developer needs to know a lot of things, so that s/he can figure out ways to leverage the best technologies available in order to make things seamless for users. So we asked him about the cloud automation and he believes that it has a good scope  — cloud automation will soon be a big wave in the industry. “We use a variety of cloud services while development that needs to be sanitised frequently in terms of performance, serviceability, etc. If there is no automation, we would need large manual efforts,” said Vishal.

Talking about Kubernetes, here is what Vishal said: “it supports a variety of container runtimes. Its concept of pods makes it easy to deploy containerised workloads in a consistent way without having to worry about which specific servers are hosting them. But what has really given Kubernetes an edge over other orchestrators is that, from the time it appeared in 2015 as an open source project, it has been supported by multiple organisations.”

What Vishal feels about the iOS community

When asked about the iOS community and what makes them different from others in the industry, Vishal said, “I love the iOS community and feel proud being a part of it. Apple doesn’t make things complicated, as stated by Steve Jobs. Rather, we (iOS community) focus on making things very simple, easy to use (user-friendly) without compromising with the quality.”

A word of advice from Vishal to all those who want to have a career in the software development: “If you want to be a developer, you should have a strong foundation — basics should be crystal clear. If basics are strong, one can conquer this domain.”