Interview with Kiswono Prayogo, Head of Software Development at President University, Indonesia

Continuing from my previous interview, this is the third post for my "Humans Of Programming World" series of interviews with developers from different parts of the world. The aim of these interviews is to highlight the talent diversity in software engineering/technology world. Most of the interviews will be skewed towards Golang, but occasionally some post will be about developers using other programming languages as well.


Tell us something about yourself.

A programmer from Indonesia, love to learn about programming technologies. At first I learn about Basic, VB6, Delphi 5, C, C++ (still the old one 1998), back to VB6 and Delphi 7, jump to PHP, back to C++ (for thesis), and then full time using Linux, playing with NodeJS, did some private tutoring about C#, VB.NET, but mostly PHP, start using Ruby for real project, and I like it! but it's quite slow, so I tried Go and I love it!

Mr. Kiswono - fourth from left - with his teammates

Can you briefly tell us about how you got to learn and use Golang?

By comparing with many popular languages at first then I started to use it to teach data structures to university students. Currently, I use Golang to develop the information systems here.

Which feature(s) that you like the most in Golang?

Simple and consistent syntax (really easy to learn!), low memory usage, fast to compile (Go 1.4), good runtime performance.

What advice or action that you would give or see to help foster diversity in Golang community worldwide?

Force it into the university's curriculum *evil laugh*

What are your advice to newcomers to Golang?

You won't regret your decision to learn this language :3

Most of the current OS is written in C language. If you are going to create a new Operating System with Golang.What would you name your new OS?

OSGo or maybe GolangOS

Can you give us some insights into your workflow/thinking process when writing codes? How does or what roles that Golang plays in influencing your workflow/thinking process.

Just normal analysis, design, code, test, repeat, because Golang has a fast compile time, it really helps me out.

What is the startup scene like in Jakarta, Indonesia? Do you think Golang will be become popular or become the language of choice for new startups in Jakarta?

There're a lot of startups in Bandung and Jakarta (about 40+ km from the place that I live). Yes, it becomes quite popular these days, even used by one of the most popular online market place in my country (Tokopedia started using Go).

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Big Thanks to you for taking the time to do this interview! Terima Kasih kerana sudi meluangkan masa untuk temu bual email ini. Wish that you are able to ahhh...ummm.... force universities in Indonesia to adopt Golang one day

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NOTES: Apart from using Golang and lecturing, Kiswono can be found on Stack OverFlow answering and asking variety of programming questions. If you have questions related to Golang(or any programming language) and want to ask in Bahasa Indonesia(of course, English as well), you know who to ask in SO.