Meet the Writer: HackerNoon's Contributor and Developer Evangelist, Raymond Camden

So let’s start! Tell us a bit about yourself. For example, name, profession, and personal interests.

I’m Raymond Camden. I’m currently employed as a Senior Developer Evangelist for Adobe, mostly focused on our document APIs (think doing stuff with PDFs, Office docs, etc at scale) but also involved with our Photoshop APIs as well. I’ve worked in the dev rel space “professionally” for 10 years or so, and unofficially for about ten before that. I’m mostly focused on the web platform, and dabble in low code/no code solutions, serverless, and enterprise cat demo creation. I’ve run a blog (raymondcamden.com) for twenty years now and have published books on web development. (Some of them even actually sold a few copies.)

I’m married to a wife as nerdy as me and we’re parents to eight kids (and no, that’s not a typo).

I’m a huge Star Wars fan, but like Star Trek, sci fi, fantasy, as well.

Interesting! What was your latest Hackernoon Top story about?

My latest is a story on updating and supporting URL parameters in Alpine. I discovered Alpine about a year ago and fell in love with its simplicity and ease of use. It advertises itself as a “modern jQuery” and that feels completely appropriate for how it works. Previously I was heavy into Vue.js, and while I still have a lot of respect for Vue, Alpine feels more targeted to what I do.

Do you usually write on similar topics? If not, what do you usually write about?

Yes. :) I’ve been working on the web since about 1995 or so. During that time I went from mostly focused on the back end (I spent many years in the ColdFusion community) to mostly front-end topics. I’ve seen the platform grow at an astonishing rate and I’ve loved to see how much better things are now for developers than when I started back in the stone age.

Great! What is your usual writing routine like (if you have one?)

The most important part of my routine is tracking my ideas. If I don’t write down an idea I’ve had, I’m most definitely going to forget about it. I’ve used various solutions over the years, but lately, I’ve really enjoyed using Microsoft To Do.

Generally, I’ll build a demo for my blog post ahead of time, and then write about it, usually in one setting.

Being a writer in tech can be a challenge. It’s not often our main role, but an addition to another one. What is the biggest challenge you have when it comes to writing?

For me it’s promotion. I track how well my content is going by looking at page views and such, and I do promote my stories, but I could do better. Currently my “routine” is to post on Mastodon, then Twitter and LinkedIn. Finally, I republish my work on Hackernoon a week or so later.

What is the next thing you hope to achieve in your career?

Honestly, I still feel like I have a decade or more ahead of me in learning about developer relations. I love this field and hope to continue in it till I retire.

Wow, that’s admirable. Now, something more casual: What is your guilty pleasure of choice?

Listening to trance/techno/pop music at unsafe volumes. I also hold the high score in our family for Ellie Goulding’s “Lights” on Just Dance.

Do you have a non-tech-related hobby? If yes, what is it?

Books, video games, movies. I’m currently wrapping up the “Shadow and Bone” trilogy and “Octopath 2” for the Switch. Like a lot of folks, I took up baking during Covid, and while I didn’t get deep into it at all, I enjoy it still today. I’m really looking forward to Diablo 4 in a week or two. This is the only game both my wife and I play, so it will be fun to go deep into that for a few months.

What can the Hacker Noon community expect to read from you next?

I’m not sure. :) I can say I’ve been meaning to look into Microsoft’s mapping solutions (in my last job I was a developer advocate for HERE, a mapping company), and I still want to dig into web components more.

What’s your opinion on HackerNoon as a platform for writers?

I mainly use it to import stories from my blog, and it works really well for that.

Thanks for taking time to join our “Meet the writer” series. It was a pleasure. Do you have any closing words?

Thanks for having me, and may the force be with you!