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.

1. Kiplinger Magazine (Archived Link) ↩︎
2. LinkedIn Page for Big Nerd Ranch (Archived Link) ↩︎
3. 9-to-5 Mac (Archived Link) ↩︎

#technology #history #ios #ai #reminiscing #career

I just published a new issue of For The Learn about apocalypses after being inspired by the podcast and book by Dan Carlin (of Hardcode History fame) and then I started seeing apocalypses everywhere in both daily and historic life, even as recently as two years ago.

Carlin's book, The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misseswas a great read, covering relatively “bloodless” apocalypses of empires from Assyrian to Roman to the very “bloody” incredible Black Plague that killed 60% of Europe's population. One of the key points that Carlin makes in his book is that what history views as an “apocalypse” may have been more like a transition to a new dynamic. He points out that although the people who experienced the “transition” probably viewed like an apocalypical disaster, after reading it I started noticing the many transitions (violent or peaceful) in other books I was reading.

Anyways, if writing that connects distant topics into a common thread interests you check it out the latest issue of my occasional email and RSS newsletter over at For The Learn, titled The Past, Present, and Future Apocalypse. Every issue includes a “Links of Interest” section of currated books, podcasts, videos and articles which functions like that “Suggested Videos” wormhole section of YouTube that you find yourself falling into. 😜

Issue #3: The Past, Present, and Future Apocalypse

What comes to mind when you picture the Apocalypse? A lifeless, irradiated planet? The end of times from religious texts? What did our ancestors imagine and experience? What about our future selves or our descendants?

#crosspromotion #connectingideas #history #futurism #politics #religion