I'm Zihan Lin
Hi, there! Welcome to my website. My name is Zihan Lin. I'm a passionate, versatile and reliable developer.
Beside that, I also understand myself as a dataflow builder and organiser. If you are interested in what dataflow is, and how your project or business will be benefit from a dataflow, just follow me. I'll share some understanding of the development with you.
It is All About Passion
I'm not a developer who is only trying to make a live. Coding is my hobby, I started learning coding since I was 10, and I'm still doing it.
I love to see things running in an organised way, and I love to learn new things. No matter which project I'm working on, I would also put my passion into it, as if I'm working for my own project.
I Don’t Classify Myself
I don't classify myself as any specific type of developer, since doing so brings me nothing but only restrictions.
Although I do have spent most of my career life building web-services – including frontend, backend and devops, I'm always looking for more experiences in different areas. No matter if it is desktop, mobile, hardware or game development, or even data analyse, machine learning and deep learning, I'm willing to learn and extend my horizon.
If It Doesn’t Work, It Is Nothing
I value the functionality, quality, maintainablity and the stability of the software a lot. If software doesn't work, or if it cannot grow in the long run as software is supposed to be, then it is nothing.
Thus, I always try my best to deliever on time, design flexible structures, write clean and readable code, and try to keep a good test coverage of the project.
But ... What is Dataflow?
I believe, no matter what type of development, and no matter where the software is being applied, there is a common core behind the development, which I call "dataflow".
Dataflow is the motion of the data within the situation where the software will be applied. As a developer, my mission is to understand it, analyse it, "catch" it, and finally manipulate it with my code.
No matter if the software is a frontend application, gathering data from user actions and transferring them to HTTP calls; or a backend application, gathering data from the HTTP call and persisted it into the database; or a hardware program, gathering the data from the physical world using its sensors and filtering out the noises and transferring it into PWM signals for the servo; or the neural network training program, fetching data from the storage and feeding it into the network, and collecting result, updating the weight of the nodes in the network. There is always data flowing around in the blood vessels of software.
The scope of the dataflow is not only restricted to the software itself, but also in the whole business, or even covering the whole industry. The product comes from the supplier, the specs are being extracted from the document, the photos are being taken, price has been decided and then all of those data are being stored in the database, waiting for being queried by the customers. There are suppliers constantly providing new products. There are competitors constantly providing the comparable services and products in different price. And there are comments, reviews and messages flying all over the Internet. Those data will be collected by the company and then being turned into business decisions. If we could understand the dataflow, the applying field of software is unlimited.
Thus, I'm always trying to grasp an overview of the dataflow, before I even start to code anything. So that I can understand the usage of the software, and most importantly, the business value of the software, in a better way. I will know where my efforts should go, and adjust my work to fit into the dataflow. No matter if it is only a quick and dirty prototype to prove the structural idea, or a bullet proof web-service which should be extended constantly and running forever, or a simple script which fetches data regularly, or a backend service in jungle of containers, I will come up with a proper solution.
I'm Ready Now, And You?
I hope my wall of text has made my point of view about development well. Now, I am ready for building and organising your dataflow. Are you ready too?