A tale as old as me

2024-12-20

This is the first post, so i will begin by putting down a few things about myself.

At the time of typing this, I am 43 years old. I feel old as dirt...

I love Dungeons & Dragons (TTRPG)

I've played since I was little. I usually DM now. My players are cool because they know the rules better than I do. D&D has gone through so many rule sets over the years that I've really just gotten bored of learning the rules. I know that annoys people sometimes because, as the DM, I need to make rulings during play. But I prefer to just be the guy who knows where the story is (mostly) going and the guy who controls the monsters. I refer to my players for what the rules are.

I love making music

I worked in a great music venue when I was flunking out of university (the first time). The vibe was electric and I've held onto that feeling ever since. Much later, I worked in a recording studio. I could see that the business was failing but I hung around because it was fun. I've jammed with mates many times and there is no better feeling than when everyone is imporvising and it just comes together. There is a flow state there and its true value cannot be captured in any kind of recording.

I love coding

I started programming around about 1996 when I got a Casio CFX-9850G graphing calculator in my third year of high school and I discovered it had a little module in its OS where you could write programs in some stripped down version of BASIC. I built all kinds of games on that thing :) I later went to uni to study molecular biology, but I took electives in Java just to satisfy the courses points requirements. Later, I would work for a cool Swiss software company. Even though I was their lowly support manager, it piqued my interest in coding again.

After I left that place I knuckled down and published my first App to the iOS App Store. It combined my love of improvising with my love of solving problems with code. I'd go on to publish another App, this time a game. It wasn't an RPG but it was Rad (in fact, it still is)

One thing that I noticed during all my coding endeavours is that, as the project progresses and the codebase gets larger, it also gets more complicated. I realised that this complexity is probably a result of the WAY that I code. Coding is like the proverbial 'skinning of cats' in that there are so many ways to achieve the same end.

So, I thought the best course of action must be to go back to university, but this time I should focus my study on programming. Surely, this would be a great salve for my affliction known widely as Imposter Syndrome. Well, I guess it worked, but not in the way I expected. I thought I would be presented with all this knowledge to level up my coding: deep dives into architectural patterns, application of SOLID principals, version control, testing, CI, deployment... nope. It definitely solidified my existing knowledge, and we did explore a few peripheral topics that are essential for Software dev professionals (eg, system analysis, academic UX concepts, project management, ethics...). But ultimately it just made me feel like I was just being dumb by thinking that I was not ready to be a professional. Really just a very expensive ego-boost. All the same, I'm glad I did it because now I know.

Since then, I've evolved further. I'm trying to capture the knowledge domains that I have felt inadequate in for so long. I have read multiple books on testing Swift, and Swift design patterns, and I'm enrolled in the complete senior developers course run by the crew at essential developer. I want a senior developer role, and frankly I don't care if I get one with a cool company, or if I simply perform at that level in my current endeavours as an idepenedant developer.

This blog will document my study and work as I continue down this path to becoming a great programmer. I've come a long way, but I know I have much yet to learn.