Happy 18th Anniversary, Serenity
It may seem silly to celebrate the anniversary of my first Mac purchase, which I named Serenity (after the Firefly-class vessel from the TV show by the same name). But it is not silly, because without that machine which I unboxed 18 years ago today, I would not be who I am.
Without Serenity I would not:
- Have made a video game in the-then-Mac-only Unity Game Engine with my best friend (the demo was downloaded over 1 million times), which
- Taught me to code in the Apple ecosystem (foreshadowing), which allowed me to
- Use that game to impress professors when visiting a specific private University and feel confident that Computer Science was the ideal degree track for me, which
- Pushed me to attend University to get a Computer Science degree, where I
- Met my wife at that Univerity,
- Met lifelong friends (some whom I message with on a daily basis), and which
- Happened to be the first school in the USA to give out iPhones to all incoming Freshmen, which allowed me to
- Port the Mac game to iOS to kickstart my iOS development career, which
- Funded a full semester of private University using my iOS development skills, allowing me to take out fewer loans [1], and
- Met the USAA recruiters who convinced me to take a “boring” banking job in an exciting nascent iOS development ecosystem before many banks had iPhone apps, where I
- Built a virtual assistant before AI was a cool buzzword, which
- Caused me to outgrow the available opporunities at USAA that challenged me, which led me to leave, and
- Work at Big Nerd Ranch (RIP[2]), famous for their mobile developer consulting skills and educational books that taught many famous developers how to code, where I
- Learned how to work remotely full time just before the pandemic hit
- Made lasting friendships with brilliant people
- Tore apart and re-architected apps for companies like Peloton, Apple, and (ironically), a white-label banking software provider.
- Learned SwiftUI and other important cutting-edge iOS skills I wasn't getting to practice at USAA
- Gain leadership experience (both as a tech lead, and as a manager) which,
- Prompted me to look for Principal Engineering roles, where I
- Joined a team at Stryker and helped build one of the first Apple Vision Pro apps for the medical industry[3].
Cheers to you, 2006 MacBook Pro with the 2GB ram upgrade. I would not be where I am without you.
- Kiplinger Magazine (Archived Link) ↩︎
- LinkedIn Page for Big Nerd Ranch (Archived Link) ↩︎
- 9-to-5 Mac (Archived Link) ↩︎
