Keep Moving
“We all change. When you think about it we’re all different people all through our lives. And that’s okay, that’s good, you’ve got to keeping moving so long as you remember all the people that you used to be. I will not forget one line of this, not one day, I swear. I will always remember when the Doctor was me.”
In the spring of 2008 I took my first tentative steps into the world of Objective-C and macOS (then OS X) development. I had been developing Windows software for around 13 years and was stuck on a project which used VB6 whilst .Net was starting to gain traction. I was bored and frustrated and needed something new. Fortunately my employer at the time needed someone to write a Mac application and, since I’d been using a Mac at home for a couple of years, I volunteered.
I was incredibly lucky that I was given the time and space to teach myself Objective-C. The transition wasn’t terribly easy and it took me quite a while to understand reference counting, pointers and a whole raft of other things. Fortunately, despite being fairly small, the developer community was friendly, welcoming and helpful. Very soon afterwards iOS (then iPhone OS) would massively increase the number of developers, books, blog posts, podcasts, conferences and more which made learning much, much easier. Two years later I set up my own consultancy business and have been self-employed for the last nine years and for the last six and a half I have been mainly working on the same contract.
But now, eleven years after that journey began, I am about to start-over again with Elixir.
Unlike back in 2008 I’ve been doing a reasonable amount of Elixir learning and coding in my spare time. I discovered the language around 18 months ago and fell in love with it and functional programming. This coincided with (and maybe accelerated) me starting to get itchy feet and wanting to do something new, whether with a different client or a more dramatic change.
Fortunately one of those fateful moments occurred and a few weeks ago someone I know posted on Twitter asking if they knew anyone who loved Elixir. I replied that I wanted it to be my next professional language and one thing led to another. From early June it will be.
As an added bonus, I will be working for a company which revolves around a macOS product so I get to still be a part of the community, just one step back from it. Maybe the things which annoy me will annoy me less and the things which delight me will delight me more.