Change, everything will be fine

Let’s be honest 2016 was a tough year for everyone. Along with that craziness, I gave my job to a friend and began a journey of consulting and eventually back to full time employment. I valued my former position and looked forward to growing my leadership skills in a software developer manager role. Well that all changed. While consulting, I looked forward to using my experience as a positive influence to benefit the clients which I had the privilege to serve. And eventually, I accepted a position for a company in Texas as a developer. Exercising leadership would look differently now. I’ve worked for companies in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Minneapolis, North Carolina. And I’ve worked with people around the globe. The people in Texas have been kind to me. In response to Hurricane Harvey, I’ve witnessed the level of support Texans naturally give to their fellow Texans, a few co-workers on my team spent their Labor Day weekend helping hurricane victims. Cheers Texas, you know how to take care of others better than most. I think I landed well; that makes me happy. A software company in Texas does behave differently than other software companies I’ve worked for. And it’s good, I’d say “even better” (just learned about that phase this year).

Previously in 2016, I lived in a huge house, about 3,700 sq. ft., had a great home office, and had hopes to buy that house. Oops, that didn’t work out, we down sized and moved out of town. (It even took about a year to get back a $4K deposit.) I still work remotely, but now share my office space with another room. I moved to another community in Southern California, I’ve found many kind people, fresh air (yes in CA), and I can see the stars every night. (Not so much before.) Today, friends from our church helped us pull weeds and clean our back yard - on a holiday too, so kind. I miss my big house and the community around my old place, there were kind people there too. I have a big yard and am so happy to see my family work so hard together to prepare for an upcoming back yard party we’re planning. We do not have as much room inside anymore. A friend offered to lend us a tent, which really will make the yard a nice atmosphere for our party. We’ve made some new friends and have kept some old ones too.

I’ve been a Mac user for a very long time, I previously worked for the company that produced those Mac vs PC advertisements that were so funny. I also previously worked for the company that provided ecommerce solutions to the company whose operating system has achieved world domination, and was like the only developer with a mac officially provided by the company, back then PCs were standard issue to developers. I worked on the online store and try/buy solutions to buy Office for Mac. In school, I learned to type on an Apple II (my only personal computer was a Commodore 64). I’ve bought a ton of macs for myself and my family over the past 18 years. And during that time, I only purchased one PC. At one of my old jobs we only supported the Safari web browser; which of course comes on a Mac. So, at my new job I asked for a Mac. Everyone on the team had one, there was one caveat - we run services using Windows based technologies. Also in late 2016, I was issued on of those new Macbook Pro computers with the touch bar (surprise, I really did not like that computer). Then another one, what else would I use? I got to thinking, we run Parallels for the Windows based web services we use. Why not just develop on a Windows machine, I remember I used to before, but it has been almost 10 years. Then I was often the developer who insisted on using a Mac, and now I’m the guy in a large crowd of developers and their Macbook Pros why askes for a PC. So now, I use a Dell laptop at work and a Lenovo laptop at home. Windows is different now, I’ve pleasantly surprised – I’ve been away for some time. And with the Creators Update the Windows Subsystem for Linux works pretty well. I keep telling myself I’ll just run Linux only one day, well for now I step into Ubuntu from Windows 10 using the bash command. Also, I even use a touch screen on my PC. What, the whole screen is a pointing device? Heh, I kind of like that.

The team I work with builds with ASP.Net Core technologies. So, Visual Studio or VS Code is the go to IDE/Editor. My favorite text editor, up to now, was Vim. I still like Vim, but VS Code is really good. I used to laugh at TypeScript; it seemed to me that TypeScript was a misfit within JavaScript; since dynamic types do work. Now I think… types are great, can I build with TypeScript? I recently worked on a feature and chose to use immutable data (in a JavaScript application). What could be wrong with state in a thick client (JavaScript) application? I like the immutable data flow much better now. Thanks to Elm for catching my interest in using types, functional programming, and immutable data. For almost 5 years I have built applications with the Ember.js framework which itself has been through many changes. And now I’m so excited about Web Components, the v1 specification and polyfills are coming along great. Maybe soon I’ll develop mostly with Web Components. I miss some aspects of Rails, Django but look forward to learning the concepts around Domain Driven Design (DDD). The team I’m on, favors many of the concepts and solutions which stem from the DDD methodologies. We value capturing the behaviors within a software system and the ubiquitous language among stake holders/clients than we value how a technology system typically functions. I’ve come to recognize that so many CRUD based solutions were short sighted. I’m interested in RxJS, Cycle.js, and I think I will tinker with these reactive and functional approaches to software development. What has not changed is that I still write a bunch of tests, and keep advocating the importance of writing automated tests, both for developers and users alike.

For the past few years, my wife was a conservator for her grandfather, he suffered from Alzheimer’s. He recently passed. It was a privilege to care for him and know him during his final years. He would say, “you all must be my kin, you are so kind to me”. We’d have a partly and he’d have a surprise more than once during the event. He would become lost and alone, then I’d walk him around the room and re-introduce him to his family, and he was suddenly so happy to be surrounded by people who love him. We will miss him; the responsibility was significant, now that also has changed.

We keep a mini zoo at home, but for the past 18 year we have not had one cat that become our pet, ever. This summer, we adopted a kitty. He is so cute, curious, and cuddly. A few months back we lost the best dog we ever owned, she was incredible. There are five of us at home (in 2016 we launched 2) we came up with five names for the cat, I just call him “Kitty”. I know he will grow up, maybe I’ll call him “Gretsky” then; he likes to play with lids like they are hockey pucks.

In the last year what changed? The political landscape for one. The “twitterverse” seems very polarized and promotes echo chambers. I changed… jobs, roles, computers, operating systems, backend solutions (programming languages), text editor of choice, work for a Southern organization vs Costal, share office space vs personal office, frequency of travel, lost a pet, tried a kind new pet, lost a team, gained a team, downsized our home (in half), launched two children, training (Krav Maga), communities, cities, churches, schools, neighbors, friends, family, responsibilities, health, and eyesight. I am sure I forgot something that belongs on this list. That that is enough. I have not changed much, everything around me changed drastically - I still think different and am one of the crazy ones who thinks they can change the world. Two constants have been with me this past year: change and kindness. Even though I had a tough year in 2016, 2017 has been much better. Don’t get me wrong I get serious threats to my safety and security; and, I do notice the anger around the USA. But, I choose my comfort zone within the storms of life - kindness works well. In fact, kindness is battle tested with withstands change. No wonder when I look back at all the changes that I experienced this past year (and over my career)… I found kindness within the chaos.

I typically blog about software development for the web. The title of this posts may appear off-topic. But I’d like to challenge your perception, would you challenge your own perception? I do, I find it a practice that helps me transition though change. Change happens. It’s your ability to navigate change and show your resilience though it - which makes a difference in your personal and professional life. (These days, these two cross-over anyway). So regardless of the environment you live/work in, regardless of the group think echoing from your social(media) circles - think about your course of action and resolve. Will you be the thermometer who simply reads the temperature; or will you be the thermostat that influences the temperature? My story from ’16 thru ’17 is not unique, change is a dominant force and is inescapable.

In my mind, this post addresses a key principle that is important to software craftsmanship: the ability to embrace change (to extend and receive kindness through it) will help us all build solutions that are not mediocre. Attitude reflects leadership, be the leader and make room for kindness as a constant, aside ongoing change. Building good software includes dealing with people as much as it is does computers, your resolve will result in work that is mediocre or resilient. Be the change that results in delivering even better software solutions.