Thursday, April 17, 2008

Looking to change direction...

A conversation on Twitter yesterday with Tim got me thinking.

I have been getting a little bored with being a software developer of late. I'm not really sure if it is a general apathy toward software development in general, or just the stuff I have been doing.

As any regular reader to the blog will know (all three of you), I am a born again Apple addict. I think my development boredom has come out of the fact that I sit in front of Windows for 8+ hours a day. Every time I fire up one of my Macs, my inner ten year old, open to the endless possibilities of computing returns, only to be beaten away by the 32 year old reality of being a commercial software developer when I sit back in front of a Windows box.

So I have made a conscious decision to make a change. My end goal is to eschew Windows completey and make a living as a developer on the Apple platform. I have made a start on that front with a bit of iPhone consulting, but by the end of the year I am looking to either be a full time Mac developer/consultant - whether that be Cocoa or Cocoa Touch, and/or get more in to Ruby on Rails.

I am also aiming to be getting 75%+ of my income from telecommuting gigs. Tim is showing me the way on that front, he has been completely freelance for the last 5 or so years and hasn't looked back.

Of course commercial and financial pressures might mean I have to do a little .NET stuff here and there, but there's no point setting a goal if you don't set the bar high enough. (That's enough mixed metaphor's for one post)

BTW if you are a Apple dev shop looking to offload some work I can be contacted at

james at softwarex.co.nz

3 comments:

Nic Wise said...

"I have been getting a little bored with being a software developer of late. I'm not really sure if it is a general apathy toward software development in general, or just the stuff I have been doing."

That basicly explains my past 3 years. Welcome to the club.

I blogged about learning cocoa, and got an email from a guy on the xcode dev team - he twitters here (http://twitter.com/eschaton)

Also, an aussie mac dev shop got hold of me, but I dont have the URL or comment anymore - it was on my old blogging engine :(

Anonymous said...

Welcome to the platform, and thanks, Nic, for the plug! The #1 suggestion I have for anyone new to the platform is to engage strongly with the community: Twitter, IRC (#macdev on FreeNode), weblogs, newsgroups, and mailing lists are really great for that.

It's also great to get feedback from people new to the platform with their perspectives on the tools, APIs, and so on - the Xcode feedback address is great for that, as is the Bug Reporter for filing both bugs and feature/enhancement requests.

KiwiBastard said...

chanson: Thanks for the advice. I look forward to getting involved!