I have decided to write these article series (which I call it an IT Paradigm series) in English instead of in Indonesian. It is not about who I am, or about my achievement that I will mention my background, but it is meant to show you where I’m coming from, or my perspective about the subject I am about to explain. All that I’ve got, all that I know, my passion, my skills are nothing compared to the majestic of my God, The sacrificial love of Christ Jesus, and the power of the Holy Spirit – and that is the point here that all of them is just a vessel that God graciously gives me wisdom to know Him more in one of my personal discipline.
I was graduated from a Software Engineering course, and continued my master in Network Computing, and now I am working in a global company in their IT division. As an IT team lead, I have to deal with a technology where globalization, localisation, distributed, de-coupled, component based rather than service based approach is the focus. It is an n-tier system, which is scattered globally. Those systems are not written in one common language; in fact they are written in more than 4 languages. It is a complex system which often I would admit a lack of documentation, often leads to a problem. Most of the time my role requires me to architect the “new product” for our company, and from time to time I have to think how does this new system fits well with the systems that we’ve got; in other words how to integrate the system “WELL”. The system has to be modular, flexible (configurable), de-coupled, but still consider the performance and security of such system. So that’s a brief of summary of ONE of the things I do day to day.
One day in the morning, I was driving my car to work. While listening to my favourite music Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise Brillante, I was thinking about how should I design the new system that my boss was talking the other day, what kind of architecture that will make this system very elegant. This new system should be a plug-in based architecture because of the fact it should be able to integrate with various kind of service provider without the need of re-implementing this system again and again every time there comes a new specification. Suddenly I realized one truth: how we can integrate our lives with God the provider. Isn’t it what we as Christian must do in our daily lives? We Christian must live a life of integration to the WORD.
A lot of my work, if I may summarize, is an integration work, either internally or externally – it comes down to integrate one system to another system. When we talked about integration in IT, there has to be a system that acts as a service provider, this service provider will need to be exposed either to the cloud (internet), or to some restricted areas so that other system (I call it: “consumer”) could integrate with it. This service provider has 1 one or more methods or functions that my system could use to interact with or to fulfil its job. So what must I do so that my system could integrate with a service provider? First, my system must always be connected with the provider. This is the most fundamental step required so a consumer can be said as “working”. Once the connection is maintained, the consumer has to implement methods that service provider has initially exposed. A consumer cannot integrate with the provider if the service provider does not expose it self to the consumer (either it via soap, rest, etc). The more methods a consumer used, the richer the consumer will be. Each method has a rule (function definition: what parameters required, output values, etc) that is specified by the provider. One can’t have a method without following the rule; if one doesn’t follow it won’t work.
Does that shows how we Christian suppose to live in relation with God, which is our creator and our provider? There are lots of people nowadays knows a lot of bible teachings, doctrines, terminologies, but their heart far from God, they are not connected with God the provider, like a system that has all the methods in it but it is not connected with the service provider. Another case, there are people who know but they don’t do what they know in their daily lives. Some other people say they love God, but they don’t want to discern the teaching from the bible, they don’t want to learn, they don’t want to “implement the methods”. Romans 10:17 said: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ”.
One cannot live an integrated live without doing all of these mandatory things. We have to get personal with God every moment, we have to be always connected, and our mind should always think what God please. Do we pray everyday? Do we pray every moment?
Integrated living is not just saying that we love God. When we love God, there must be a natural respond to that. Our hunger to the WORD of God is the natural respond that we love God. His WORD is just like an oasis in the middle of a dry desert; we will begin to understand and know Him and His will more and more. Our life will become richer and richer spiritually just like a consumer that knows and have provider’s method that has been implemented within it. The consumer has to implement the method, otherwise they can’t talk, and they can’t be said as an integrated system. We have to grow spiritually, by discerning what God says through His Word, which is revealed by God alone.
His revelation, which also means His grace to us, is needed; just like what I said earlier that a consumer system could not have a method if a service provider does not expose that method to the consumer. So it is in one hand a grace of God that He reveals Himself to us, but on the other hand is our responsibility to respond to what He has revealed. We have to respond by following His rule, and this is what pleased Him.
To summarise, integrated living is a lifetime goal for us Christian. It is a continuous process just like the integrated system which must always be connected and do its work continuously. If it happens any of the items is broken: let it be the connection, the implemented method changed, or the rule is broken, then the end-to-end integration is broken. Such system should immediately be fixed: it could be that the service provider changed the rule, it could be that the service provider comes up with new API methods that consumer must implement. It is not service provider that follows consumer, but consumer has to always follow the provider (although in real world any change to provider needs to consider the consumer – but in nutshell consumer follows the provider), so as we have to follow our Creator, our God; His will and not our will.
~ Paul Hartono
I was graduated from a Software Engineering course, and continued my master in Network Computing, and now I am working in a global company in their IT division. As an IT team lead, I have to deal with a technology where globalization, localisation, distributed, de-coupled, component based rather than service based approach is the focus. It is an n-tier system, which is scattered globally. Those systems are not written in one common language; in fact they are written in more than 4 languages. It is a complex system which often I would admit a lack of documentation, often leads to a problem. Most of the time my role requires me to architect the “new product” for our company, and from time to time I have to think how does this new system fits well with the systems that we’ve got; in other words how to integrate the system “WELL”. The system has to be modular, flexible (configurable), de-coupled, but still consider the performance and security of such system. So that’s a brief of summary of ONE of the things I do day to day.
One day in the morning, I was driving my car to work. While listening to my favourite music Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise Brillante, I was thinking about how should I design the new system that my boss was talking the other day, what kind of architecture that will make this system very elegant. This new system should be a plug-in based architecture because of the fact it should be able to integrate with various kind of service provider without the need of re-implementing this system again and again every time there comes a new specification. Suddenly I realized one truth: how we can integrate our lives with God the provider. Isn’t it what we as Christian must do in our daily lives? We Christian must live a life of integration to the WORD.
A lot of my work, if I may summarize, is an integration work, either internally or externally – it comes down to integrate one system to another system. When we talked about integration in IT, there has to be a system that acts as a service provider, this service provider will need to be exposed either to the cloud (internet), or to some restricted areas so that other system (I call it: “consumer”) could integrate with it. This service provider has 1 one or more methods or functions that my system could use to interact with or to fulfil its job. So what must I do so that my system could integrate with a service provider? First, my system must always be connected with the provider. This is the most fundamental step required so a consumer can be said as “working”. Once the connection is maintained, the consumer has to implement methods that service provider has initially exposed. A consumer cannot integrate with the provider if the service provider does not expose it self to the consumer (either it via soap, rest, etc). The more methods a consumer used, the richer the consumer will be. Each method has a rule (function definition: what parameters required, output values, etc) that is specified by the provider. One can’t have a method without following the rule; if one doesn’t follow it won’t work.
Does that shows how we Christian suppose to live in relation with God, which is our creator and our provider? There are lots of people nowadays knows a lot of bible teachings, doctrines, terminologies, but their heart far from God, they are not connected with God the provider, like a system that has all the methods in it but it is not connected with the service provider. Another case, there are people who know but they don’t do what they know in their daily lives. Some other people say they love God, but they don’t want to discern the teaching from the bible, they don’t want to learn, they don’t want to “implement the methods”. Romans 10:17 said: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ”.
One cannot live an integrated live without doing all of these mandatory things. We have to get personal with God every moment, we have to be always connected, and our mind should always think what God please. Do we pray everyday? Do we pray every moment?
Integrated living is not just saying that we love God. When we love God, there must be a natural respond to that. Our hunger to the WORD of God is the natural respond that we love God. His WORD is just like an oasis in the middle of a dry desert; we will begin to understand and know Him and His will more and more. Our life will become richer and richer spiritually just like a consumer that knows and have provider’s method that has been implemented within it. The consumer has to implement the method, otherwise they can’t talk, and they can’t be said as an integrated system. We have to grow spiritually, by discerning what God says through His Word, which is revealed by God alone.
His revelation, which also means His grace to us, is needed; just like what I said earlier that a consumer system could not have a method if a service provider does not expose that method to the consumer. So it is in one hand a grace of God that He reveals Himself to us, but on the other hand is our responsibility to respond to what He has revealed. We have to respond by following His rule, and this is what pleased Him.
To summarise, integrated living is a lifetime goal for us Christian. It is a continuous process just like the integrated system which must always be connected and do its work continuously. If it happens any of the items is broken: let it be the connection, the implemented method changed, or the rule is broken, then the end-to-end integration is broken. Such system should immediately be fixed: it could be that the service provider changed the rule, it could be that the service provider comes up with new API methods that consumer must implement. It is not service provider that follows consumer, but consumer has to always follow the provider (although in real world any change to provider needs to consider the consumer – but in nutshell consumer follows the provider), so as we have to follow our Creator, our God; His will and not our will.
~ Paul Hartono
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