Meet the game developers: HT-Gusy

It's impossible to introduce our third guest without mentioning the fact that she's the living proof that male developers aren't alone anymore in the world of online football management games. We present to you... HT-Gusy (727033)! 

Written by Mod-Fleming (10382507) and HPE-rikdaan (13289066)

Hello Gusy, thank you for joining us! Can you tell something about yourself?
I was born and raised in Venezuela, and I moved to Sweden 7 years ago to work for Hattrick. I'm married and have a son.


What are your daily tasks within the HT-team? What does a close-to-'normal' day look like for you?
First thing I do is usually look at our ticket system to see if there are any critical bugs that need to be fixed. Then I start or continue working on whatever project I'm involved with at the moment, which is usually creating new features or making improvements for our site or apps.


Being Venezuela a Latin country there are probably lots of differences between Venezuelan and Swedish societies. Did you feel a cultural shock at first?
I wouldn't call it a shock, no, but, of course, things are very different here compared to Venezuela. The thing that surprised me the most was that people here don't talk to strangers under almost any circumstance. In Venezuela is not that uncommon that two or more strangers start up a conversation while for example waiting for the bus.


You are a mum now for almost three years. What is it like to combine this with a job in a foreign country far, far away from your own? :)
I have to say it has been hard, especially in the first months, not to have any family around to help out. And I also feel a bit sad sometimes because he's a wonderful boy and my family is missing out on most of the stuff. But I love Sweden and we're very happy here, so it's worth it.


How's your Swedish after all those years? ;-)
Min svenska är bra, tack! (My Swedish is good, thank you!)

I handle myself in Swedish in all day-to-day situations, but since I speak English at the office and Spanish at home, my Swedish is not even close to perfect.


Can you explain to us something about the code Hattrick has been made off? What IDE do you guys use, for example?
Hattrick was originally built in classic ASP and backend apps in VB6 (well, the very first Hattrick was built by Björn in I don't know what language, but it was rewritten by Daniel not so long after and there are no traces of that first code left).

Then the web code was migrated to .NET, and from a few years back all new pages are made in Angular2, but only new pages. Most of the backend apps, including the match engine, have also been rewritten in .NET, but there's still one in VB6, and everyone dodges working on that one of course.


What languages do you code in? Which one is your favorite one and why? And the most difficult one?
Maybe I should start by saying that I'm not a coder in the strict sense of the word, I'm more like an all-round dev with database and management abilities. So while I've coded in a good share of languages, I'm currently only "fluent" in the ones we use for Hattrick, since coding is not my passion. My favorite thing is to write database procedures (the language is called SQL) because I love databases and working with big chunks of data. And I don't think any of the languages I work with are particularly difficult.


Is Hattrick’s source-code healthy? Almost 22 years of coding and recoding might have done some damage to it, or not?
I think the majority is since most of the code has been refactored. But of course there's still some old ugly code around that no one wants to touch.


Can you remember what was the most complex feature you had to build for Hattrick?
By myself? The training estimation is what first comes to mind.


What's the most challenging task when setting up such features?
I would say to keep into account all type of users. The wishes of a hardcore user sometimes are very different from what a casual user would prefer or what could make a new user stay in the game.


If you had unlimited powers, money and time to change 3 things on HT right now, which 3 things would you choose?
1. As an internal project, I'd have all old code (VB6, classic ASP and so on) rewritten to .NET. It takes so much time and energy from us whenever we need to make changes there.
2. I'd add some animations to the live viewer, so you can visually somehow see on the field what the texts talk about.
3. I'd replace the manual with contextual help and tips so newbies are able to learn things "on the go" and also us not so newbies can easily access whatever info we need.


What is your personal opinion on the current financial director system? Should it be changed or improved, or are you fine with it?
That's not my area of expertise, but in general I'm fine with it.


Can you tell us a funny anecdote about something that ever happened in the HT-team?
When former HT-Erik won his first trophy he was all excited, he even printed it out and bought cake at the office for us to celebrate with him. So HT-Bodin replaced the trophy image on his team page with a trophy-sized image of Krusty the clown. It was so funny to see the confusion on his face when he saw it :D


In your opinion what are the biggest challenges Hattrick will have to face in the next let’s say…3 years?
In my opinion, the biggest challenge we have right now, and that is increasing as time goes by, is to keep our loyal users who love the game exactly as it is, while also making things attractive for new users who are now used to much faster, interactive and design-heavy games.


Have you ever regretted your decision to move to Sweden and become a developer of this game?
Not even close! As I said before, I love Sweden and our life here is great. And I absolutely love my job, we're like a family and Daniel and Johan are the best bosses one could ever have :)

If you like the article, feel free to click "Like" and/or leave a comment. You can discuss the article on the forum: (17278491.1).

---

After the two interviews with HT-Aartspam and HT-Johan, HPE-rikdaan and Mod-Fleming decided to work together to interview - most of - the other HTs. This was the third part of the series.

(17739) - previous interview with Gusy, by LA-Artod (11112383)
(21001) - interview with HT-Aartspam
(21090) - interview with HT-Johan

Next time: who knows?

---

Previous article: Interview with Hattrick Masters champion of last season (21263).

Koppelje rjochtstreeks nei dit artikel (HT-ML, foar it foarum): [ArticleID=21191]