Andrey Savchenko
Introduction
Andrey “Rarst” Savchenko is a WordPress contractor from Kiev, Ukraine.
He believes in a Web of content sites that are a delight to discover, read, and navigate. For that he helps other developers on complex tasks and long–term value goals. His services include: make it fast, automate menial, stare down a legacy codebase, fix the world (one bug at a time).
In free time he likes to drink tea, read science fiction and every tweet in his timeline.
Q. How did you come into your current field? Share a bit of the background?
A. I had always been a techie. Though I think more in terms of solving problems than coding, the code is the most usual tool for me.
In my twenties I bounced through some large companies, from aircraft manufacturing to city utilities, doing things from CAD to support infrastructure.
Despite that I ended up in WordPress space simply through starting my self-hosted blog, Rarst.net. 
Q. What’s the most interesting project you have done to date in WordPress?
A. After a decade in WordPress I have been involved in quite a few interesting things! The one fresh on my mind is wrapping up wp_date project this year. That was the initiative I started to improve Date/Time component of WordPress core. The final parts had shipped in WordPress 5.3 https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/09/23/date-time-improvements-wp-5-3/
Q. Have you ever been to any WordPress meetups or WordCamps? If yes did you learn anything useful?
A. I had been to plenty, since I started travelling to WordCamps in 2013. I still run an unbroken streak of having been to every WordCamp Europe so far.
For me WordCamps are more of a social events and opportunities to meet community on global and local levels. Due to a broad range of WordCamp audiences, it is rare that I see advanced level development talks on schedule.
Q. What does your workstation look like?
I am not a notebook person and work on a self–built desktop PC with two 27″ displays.
My room is semi–demolished to get some renovations done, so I’ll pass on a photo of the mayhem.
Q. What kind of tools/software do you currently use for your creations?
A. Most of my productive time is spent in PhpStorm IDE, Vivaldi browser, and Total Commander file manager.
Q. What interesting feature do you think you would like to see in WordPress and is currently missing?
A. I would say modern templating. WordPress theme templating had seen no innovation in core for a very long time and complex projects really suffer, unless they swap it for modern alternatives like Twig.
Q. Out of the current plugins and themes which one do you like the most and why?
A. Can I say Laps https://github.com/Rarst/laps performance profiler, even if it is my own?
I am very minimal with third party plugins and use almost none for my own needs.
Q. Which WordPress hosting do you use and would you recommend for your clients and others?
A. I have been hosting my personal sites with SiteGround for the last several years, though those are not necessarily as technically intricate as it can get.
Q. Do you like/love what you currently do in WordPress?
A. I enjoy tinkering on things and pushing WP ecosystem forward in ways I think are important.
But WordPress project’s priorities do get frustrating at times. On some days I just want to do things normal way, not WordPress way.
Q. What would you like to do in the future in the current field or somewhere else?
A. So far… PHP is home. It’s the language I am most happy and productive with, so at the moment I see myself going on with it for a long time.
Q. Can you give us some reference for whom we should conduct an interview next and why?
A. So many fantastic people I got to know and befriend in WordPress! I would struggle to single anyone out, my followees https://twitter.com/Rarst/following and WordPress list https://twitter.com/Rarst/lists/wordpress/members on Twitter would be a good place to look.
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