Welcome to the OpenShift Developer Spotlight where we get to know the members of the OpenShift community a little better and show off their skills as developers.
Interested in being featured? Apply here or view past entries.
Name: Matthew Reid
Hometown: Norwich
Twitter: @Matthew_Reid
Blog: http://www.matt-reid.co.uk/
What is your preferred Development Language?
Java, Scala
What inspired you to be a developer?
I loved creating things with a computer from a young age. The first thing I remember making is a maze using spreadsheet software.
What programming language did you learn first?
BASIC
What tools do you use the most often for development? (Operating system, IDE, etc)
OSX (standard for the aspiring hipster these days). Eclipse IDE as well as Intellij, Brackets and Xcode
I use yeoman for bootstrapping web projects and am a big fan of npm and grunt. For Java projects I use Maven and SBT for Scala.
What is your favorite development stack? (OS/language/server/database)
For development, I am most familiar with OSX/Java/Spring/Tomcat and MongoDB.
I am also enjoying Node.js (express and mongo) and Scala (play framework) at the moment.
What advantages does OpenShift give you that other hosting platforms don't?
OpenShift gives the quick automated deployment of a PaaS with the control that I can ssh into the box when I want.
What are the best features of OpenShift that some people might not know about?
Git integration, instant deploy. PaaS meaning I can concentrate on building the application rather than setting up server architecture (which is boring).
What are one or two things you think are missing from OpenShift that would make it better?
Auto scaling for diy application types or native support for Playframework
Tell us more about your application currently hosted on openshift:
Name: BakeOff
What does it do? BakeOff is a social network for recipes. Users can discover new recipes, record what they have baked and challenge their friends (via facebook).
What technologies were used to create your app? Playframework, MongoDB, Scala, Akka. An Html5 frontend is hosted on S3 using Bootstrap, KnockoutJs and jQuery.
What motivated you to create this application and what problems does it solve? My girlfriend came up with the idea on valentines day (she is a huge baking fan). I have spent my evenings and weekends since creating her vision (much to her annoyance).
What new features do you have planned for this application and will they implement any new technologies within OpenShift? I plan to move the client side to nodejs (utilising the rendr framework) on OpenShift.
Sign up for OpenShift and create your first application in minutes.