Time for a fresh start
Today was my last day at my current consulting position. I’ve been with this particular client for many years. Leaving was a difficult decision to make, but I believe it will ultimately be for the best.
Hello New Opportunities
I’m beginning to look for new work. The excitement of a startup appeals to me. I would love to start my own software business, but I am having trouble coming up with an idea that seems worthwhile. That seems like a weak excuse right now.
It feels strange to work on my resume again. I think it has been 8 years since I last updated it.
Hello New Technology
I’ve been programming professionally for about 15 years now. Most of that time I have been using a Microsoft technology stack. It has been a great experience and I have enjoyed seeing stack mature over the years. Of course there have been some missteps (ahem, Entity Framework version 1, Silverlight) but on the whole I am very pleased with .Net and the related technology ecosystem. I also realize I have some significant bias and have had very little exposure to alternative stacks. I am not yet abandoning Microsoft technologies, but to me it seems like all the cool kids are using an open source stack.
My plan is to start using some new-to-me technologies. I want to learn them enough to be comfortable and have a better understanding of the trade-offs of each. My plan it to start with Ruby/Rails and Linux, and later try my hand at Python. I’ll probably build a couple web sites along the way. Perhaps I will post my code on GitHub, we’ll see.
I’m not very far along in this educational journey but, in general, it feels a bit like the middle tier is becoming less important. If you are writing a single page application, the middle tier consists of only REST services. That simplifies the middle tier, since there is no server side rendering - that knocks one whole leg out of the server-side MVC concept.