Baney Acosta is a Senior Software Engineer in Colombia working with cloud technologies, particularly AWS. He works on a fintech team where one of his main tasks is the maintenance and refactoring of restatements, transactions, cancellations and corrections processes, among other tasks. Before this, Baney was a Web Developer Intern who decided to advance his career by enrolling in The Linux Foundation’s Introduction to Open Source Development, Git, and Linux (LFD201) eLearning course. We spoke to Baney to learn more about his experience.
Linux Foundation: How did this training and/or certification help you obtain your current position?
Baney Acosta: The course helped me to understand the business better and how to address it generally. It covered all the types of open source licenses and when to use one or another, in addition to the main Linux command scripts and a good understanding of Bash. I learned a lot of good practices around working with other developers and with distributed repositories, which helped me to gain an understanding of how to collaborate with the open source community. This includes working with Git – which I do day to day now – which was necessary and important. The fact that I received training from the Linux Foundation definitely weighed in when I was applying for jobs. In fact I mentioned this training when interviewing for my current position and it was one of the big reasons I was hired.
LF: What was the most useful thing you took away from your training and/or certification experience?
BA: The most useful thing was definitely learning about Linux development tools, where I learned a lot about using command lines to manipulate files and processes using regular expressions to make tasks easier. Also, how to use various methods for debugging, compiling and building packages was very useful. Finally, understanding all the most important aspects of open source and how to collaborate with other teams is knowledge I am benefitting from.
LF: How long did it take you to complete the training?
BA: About 2 to 3 months.
LF: Did you take advantage of the online forum for the course while taking it? If so, did you find it useful and in what way?
BA: Definitely, the forum helped me to better understand some concepts that I had only half understood beforehand.
LF: How have you shared your knowledge with others?
BA: I was mentored by a colleague and later I shared the knowledge I gained from the course with him. I explained how to perform certain tasks useful for his role, and methods for working with files and Git repositories.
LF: Is there anything else you would like to add?
BA: The instructor addressed the topics in the course very well, and it was enjoyable to take. The topics covered made sense and the course provided enough resources to learn. I really enjoyed the application exercises and would even have liked to see more of them.
LF: Do you plan to pursue any other training or take a certification exam? If so, which ones are you interested in?
BA: Sure, I am interested in taking the OpenJS Node.js Application Developer and Services Developer certifications, as well as considering a cloud or DevOps certification.
