The normal nerves that go with a new position have started to settle down now that I’m going into my 3rd week at LoopFX. I’m really happy to have joined the team; everyone is fantastic and the work is both gratifying and challenging. It’s something of a change to go from client-work web development to online application development, but I don’t think I could go back any time soon:
- My “client” is the company I work for. There’s a team of people that take pride in what what we do, which can be very motivating.
- “Normal” client-work often included a lot of hand-holding, which I do not miss. Yeah, I still have to make sound arguments for my ideas but I don’t think I’ll ever have to explain the difference between a search box and the browser’s address field.
- IE6 was a real factor in my client-work — it still represented about 10% of the viewers. To my absolute delight, Loop does not support it. (Hell yeah!)
I’ve largely spent my time redesigning a number of forms (still one of the more challenging parts of web design, if you ask me) as well as a few pages. I almost feel guilty with the amount of time and energy I’ve gotten to put into the redesigns — the client-work I did never afforded me the luxury of user interviews or extra design time to improve the experience. I think that speaks to the biggest difference I’m seeing between client-work and app development: when presented with the Triple Constraint (Cost, Time and Quality), many clients focused on Cost alone, whereas Loop focuses on Quality and works with the constraints from there.
I really do love what I’m doing and the people I do it with, yet there’s something of a skill gap that I’ve got to close. Everyone has been very understanding and helpful, but for the foreseeable future I’ll be pushing myself to learn ASP.NET and C# (with some brushing up on jQuery for good measure).
A few members of the Loop team during Hawaiian Shirt Day (I'm hidden in the very back-left)
In about 12 hours I start my new position as a web developer with the engineering team at Loop Management, LLC. I’d been with Digital Eel, Inc as a jack of all trades web designer/developer for just over 7 years — they treated me very well and I was lucky to be a part of their family — so I feel like I’m leaving behind a long history of familiarity and comfort.
I’m very excited about learning new things and meeting new people — overall I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity, but I’m still a bit nervous — 7 years is a long time, especially in the tech/knowledge industry, so I worry about a bunch of stuff:
- What kind of skill gaps do I have? Will I be thrown to the fire? Will I be over-coddled?
- What if I say the wrong thing and upset someone? Will I be branded for life as a jerk?
- What if any of the millions of little habits I’ve developed over the years is a taboo there? Are headphones considered rude? Is it bad form to surf for tech news during lunch?
The list really goes on (and becomes more inane as it does), but I fear that I won’t be getting much sleep tonight.
Financial stability + emotional and mental fulfillment ÷ the time to enjoy them × the wisdom to recognize it = success.
Today I learned that Amazon and Barnes & Noble will be launching apps to support the iPad as an e-book reader. I’ve been secretly wanting an iPad (read: I haven’t been bugging my wife yet), but this news puts me over the edge – now I really want an iPad.
I think it’s fantastic news that Amazon and B&N have the wisdom to recognize that their core product (media) is where the money is, not the platforms they’ve launched (Kindle & Nook). I wonder what the conversations are like over at Apple – do they resent the competition with their iBook stuff or do they recognize that people like me are now more interested in the iPad platform?
So here I am, really, really eager for the iPad. Yeah, it’s got some flaws, but it’s a great e-reader solution as far as I can see. Right now I’ve got this great book that I’ve been slogging through on Project Management, but it’s proven difficult because it’s a PDF. I find my attention span wanes when I’m trying to read from a monitor (I blame the internet) and reading on my iPod Touch is a bit laborious. Solution? $600 and a whole lot of pleading with my wife.
Earlier today, Valve announced that its Steam publishing platform will support the Mac this Spring and I’m crazy-excited. With this, a large number of games based on the Source Engine will also be available on the Mac. (Yay, Portal!) I’m no news guys, but both Joystiq and Kotaku have a lot of great info.
The news comes less than a month after they started beta testing Steam’s new UI, which is still rough around the edges, but now uses Webkit instead of Internet Explorer. (Yay, death-to-IE!)
What’s that? You’re a “Mac guy” and don’t play games so why should you care? Firstly, hating fun isn’t as cool as you hipsters think it is. Secondly, your favored platform just had the single largest digital distribution system for games fall into its lap. With Steam and Valve supporting the Mac, more games are most certain to follow, which is going to bring more users.
Steve Jobs has been full of empty promises about making Mac a gaming platform for over a decade and Valve just made that a real possibility. I couldn’t guess at what kind of market share increase this could trigger, but I’m willing to bet it’ll have a very measurable impact if enough game developers jump in the bandwagon.
