Open Mic Spotlight: Morgan Fainberg

UnknownThis post is part of the OpenStack Open Mic series to spotlight the people who have helped make OpenStack successful. Each week, a new contributor will step up to the mic and answer five questions about OpenStack, cloud, careers and what they do for fun. 

Morgan Fainberg is a Principal Software Engineer at Metacloud.  He has worked on a number of high-profile and large-scale properties across a number of industries (everything from Social Media, to Web Hosting, to Video Games).  He currently spends most of his time working on Keystone and is a member of the Keystone Core team. You can follow him on Twitter at @mdrnstm or read his blog here

1. What is your go-to beverage or snack while coding? 

Do you mean I must make a definitive choice between coffee, espresso, and tea (there is a big difference between espresso and coffee!)?  I guess it all depends on the type of code I’m writing.  If I happen to find myself writing new features, I think a pour-over of a dark, heavy, oily coffee (even better a French press) is the drink of the day.  When it comes to refactoring code (especially those refactors that seem to be made of edge cases upon edge cases and rabbit holes), a perfectly pulled shot of espresso followed by an Italian-style cappuccino.  For anything that is more research oriented, tea is the drink of choice.  Sometimes I can’t believe how much time I spend thinking about the consumption of caffeine.

2. Where’s your favorite place to code? In the office, at a local coffee shop? In bed?

Based upon my “go-to” beverage answer, I am sure you can guess my favorite place to write code is the local coffee shop.  I definitely prefer the shops that roast their own beans, have specialty pastry items, and are generally more of the “local” scene than the big corporate shops.  A close second would be sitting in front of 12,556,800 pixels at my desk.

3. What do you think is the coolest thing that’s happened with OpenStack over the past three years?

The coolest happening in OpenStack is the interest and adoption that has occurred.  There are few pieces of software (or any form engineering) that really meet the needs of such a varied audience.  It’s very cool to see the big players, the small players, the independents, the public cloud providers, the private cloud deployers, and everyone else involved come together in a friendly a professional way to develop something amazing.

4. Define what “open source” means to you.

Open Source is more than just a licensing view (like some people or companies would like to think).  It’s a philosophy of sharing and community.  The idea is to not only develop something fun and awesome, but to collaborate (especially in the case of OpenStack) across company lines and create a network of like-minded individuals.  It fascinates me to see what the Open Source communities (software developers, artists, even musicians) can accomplish together.  If the Open Source community members did not come from many different backgrounds much of the “ground breaking” work may not have surfaced as quickly (or at all).  Perhaps it is best to equate Open Source as a lifestyle above and beyond anything else.

5. What behavior has helped get you the furthest as a developer?

I like to jump into projects at the deep-end.  I have, historically, stuck my nose into projects that no one else wanted to look at due to difficulty or complexity (especially in corporate environments).  This behavior has made it easier to dig into the core of any challenge and come up with solutions to interesting issues and problems.  At the very least I have been exposed to a wide variety of technologies and development philosophies.  It all boils down to wanting learn something new each time I sit down to write code.

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