Learning

Earlier tonight, I published the first two revisions of http://wslack.github.io/, my new homepage. It's a little strange to be operating in the open, with every bug I introduce and fix visible to all, but it's also freeing. The world of software I'm coming from couldn't operate with those rules.

Epic uses a variety of homegrown systems to run and manage internal processes that aren't known on the public internet - the names for them are common internally, but I'm not pulling anything up in a quick Google search. It's understandable, since the core codebase that the tools support is full of trade secrets. Why? Well, this codebase and the underlying ideas and organization forms used are the result of decades of revisions and input from hundreds of customers. The world of healthcare IT is lucrative, but also rather small, and Epic has a giant target on it's back due to past and present success. Even Epic training materials are sometimes sought through illicit means.

There just aren't many companies that have fully integrated systems crossing all areas of healthcare - the vast majority of companies have grown through acquisition, often meaning that internal systems must interface to each other instead of maintaining a single master data source.

From experience, these interfaces can be very painful, and I was never frustrated that Epic maintained these secrets through policy and practice.

But in reading Greg Boone's piece, "The Supreme Joy of Writing in the Open," I already know that my future work will be much more invigorating, as everything we do can be taken and forked by anyone. That's a wonderful feeling, and I can only hope that I can be a part of efforts worth stealing.