Well, this is it kids; the end of my time at Evri. While I have cultivated a long-standing antipathy towards the Grateful Dead, I'll co-opt one of their song titles and simply mutter, "what a long strange trip it's been". I started out at Evri when it was still just a twinkle in somebody's eye. Since then I've seen it grow and mutate in ways I would have never imagined. I got to work on a lot of cool stuff and learn a bunch of new things. The best part, like any good job, was having the opportunity to work with some really great people.
But now it's time for a change. My professional clock is set to about three years—when that bell rings it's time for me to move on. This was as true at Evri as it has been anywhere else, with one major difference: I made a career-change along the way.
OK, I haven't given up software to become a sous-chef or to take troubled kids out into the woods to teach them discipline. But I think I have reached the end of my professional Java programming career. This is kind of a "Big Deal", because I've been doing it for a decade. I know, I know: never say never. It's entirely possible that I'll eat my words a year or two down the road, but for now, I can't help but feel like I'm closing a major chapter in my professional life.
I've been with that language for a long time. Lately I've made a sport of complaining about it a lot, but honestly that's simply contempt bred from familiarity. There is a lot of good about the language and, despite my railings, the baby needn't be thrown out with the bath-water. What it comes down to is that I simply don't enjoy it anymore. It used to be fun to put those pieces together, but not any longer. So I'm trading in my Java hat for my two new loves: Ruby and Objective-C.
I may be stupid, but I'm not foolish enough to think that these languages will be the only remaining languages of my career. First of all, I'm not in the habit of defining my identity from the particular technologies I work with. Secondly, these are simply the environments I'm in love with now. I'm a dedicated family-man when it comes to people, but when it comes to programming languages, tools and environments I'm as bad as Liz Taylor. But jeez, why not embrace change? I don't do this for the paycheck. I do it because I love it. Why spend my time on things that aren't making me happy anymore?
With that question burning a hole in my brain, it became clear that, for now, the twisting road that is my professional career is going to take a long detour through Ruby and Objective-C. I hope it gets some time with Erlang too—I've only dabbled with it a little bit, but found myself quite attracted right away.
As I realized that my time was at an end at Evri, the question of "what next?" loomed large. Was there someone out there that wanted someone with the skills I wanted to cultivate? If so, were they doing something cool? Was I going to go "indie"? What would that look like? Questions, questions, questions. Fortunately I stumbled across a gig that is going to let me scratch most, if not all, of those itches.
I'm taking October off to continue and complete the series of iPhone screencasts I've been writing for PeepCode. In November I'll pick up my full-time gig and kick off the next phase of my professional life. You can't imagine how humbled and fortunate I feel to be able to do this.