Software developers at the Oxford, MS.,-based mortgage technology company will participate in FNC’s first-ever 23-hour innovation challenge, a hackathon dubbed “The Forge.”
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One of the things I love most about my job is refactoring. The opportunity to remove duplicated code and make APIs easier to work with always brings so much satisfaction. It’s just a feeling of knowing we’re making something better, and I love that. Right now at FNC we are in the midst of revamping some of our software offerings, which is a great opportunity to use new technology and improve the design and architecture in ways that will make our products more flexible, more maintainable, and more scalable. As part of our revamping, we are doing the usual stuff that includes updating the UI, refactoring the code to be more loosely coupled, and migrating from a Web Form architecture (ASPX) to MVC. Another idea we have been toying with is moving portions of our application to the CQRS architecture/pattern.
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In this post I’ll discuss using RabbitMQ as a centralized service bus. RabbitMQ allows users to create a communication pipeline that enables loosely coupled processes to communicate asynchronously, scale with load, initiate system state changes, and report back on those changes as they occur. It’s a flexible system that, when used appropriately, can greatly enhance the speed and resiliency of complex systems. Message queuing systems are not, however, a magic bullet that should be applied to every situation. If you need a system that only performs synchronous actions, or you have a requirement to scale up (adding resources to the existing server) instead of scaling out (adding more servers to share processing load), then a message queue will just add a layer of complication without adding any benefit. With all that out of the way, let’s jump right in.
Old, dusty mainframes; black terminal screens with green text; and browsers that make Netscape Navigator feel modern are just some of the images that many conjure up when they think of the financial technology sector. I cannot fault anyone who has those sentiments. Heck, I often AM one of those people. However, my hope is that through this space we can debunk some of the stereotypes by sharing how much of a high it is to solve incredibly difficult problems in this $9 trillion dollar real estate mortgage industry, providing real value to both businesses and individuals, and doing so with cutting-edge, fun and creative uses of technology. Because at FNC, that is what we have been doing for the past 15 years.
We are primarily a Microsoft shop, but at the heart of it all, we are about using technology to solve real problems. We use the best tools available every day to overcome incredible challenges and are not married to any one technology. Whether that is caching with Redis, big data management with MongoDB, or iOS development, the problem drives our choice of tools, not the other way around.
We believe it is both important and beneficial, not only to ourselves but to others as well, to have very open and candid discussions about technology. That is how we grow; that is how we progress. We want to talk about what we have learned, challenges we are facing, the things we love, and the things we can improve upon within the realm of technology. We want to do our part to make this a little better place for everyone, and we feel that part of that effort includes sharing our experiences and passions. So there you have it. Welcome to Software Unwound.
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