In issue #62 of the iOS Code Review newsletter, a question was posed around imagining your career as a game and what level of the game you are at. Being a keen developer and lover of off-by-one errors, I decided I was playing two games, and neither was satisfactory!
The first game is my professional career. About 30 years ago, I started life as a programmer for a company producing financial software. For the last 20 years, I’ve worked as a database pro in the NHS, specifically in the arena of data warehousing, all powered by Microsoft SQL Server. It’s a “good” job. I lead a team of between four and six, and I am paid relatively well for my efforts. I’m very skilled at producing technical software-based solutions to problems, and I am highly focused on automation. I am frequently asked to help with non-database projects simply because my skill set makes it possible. But I don’t love it. I don’t even particularly like it a lot of the time.
The second game I’m playing is learning Swift and SwiftUI, and trying to create and publish apps so I can become a full time indie dev. I am progressing through this game very slowly and I doubt I will ever be successful with it. One of the biggest issues is that after a day playing the career-based game, I lack the energy and motivation to work on the indie stuff. Coupled with my history with anxiety and depression, I can often go days/weeks/months without progressing my indie ambitions.
Putting false modesty aside, and taking into account that I don’t consider myself an expert at either game, if I was as good at game 2 as I am at game 1, I wonder where I’d be?
I realise I need to spend no time wondering about that “What if?” and more time concentrating on the journey. Maybe that’s the only lesson for these games; just keep on playing, because maybe one day I’ll win?