I’m Andy. I’m a regular guy from Southampton in the United Kingdom. I’m a half-way decent software developer, fledgling blogger, novice entrepreneur, husband to a beautiful wife Jenny and father to a set of rapidly growing triplets, Joshua, Skylar and Neve.
So Why This Blog?
When I decide to start building this website I had a choice.
I have been a software developer for some years. I graduated in 1998 with a Masters Degree in Computing and have spent over 20 years working on various software projects for various employers.
As my knowledge, experience and responsibilities have grown, like so many before me, I have have found myself further and further removed from the technologies that drew me to this industry in the first place. Over that time, I have effectively caught a sickness. An insidious disease that has slowly crept up on me. I have become someone who reads and understands technology, someone who is expert in how to successfully design, organize, guide and deliver, large-scale software solutions but I have also become someone who has lost contact with some of those grass-roots technical skills that I used to use on a daily basis. I have become an observer rather than a participant.
And that brings me back to my choice.
When the iPhone was launched in June 2007 it fascinated me. It captured my interest, re-kindling some of the passion I used to have. Re-igniting my interest in grass-routes technologies and how they can fundamentally affect people’s lives. Since then I have spent hours, days even, reading many of the iPhone, iPad and iOS development blogs and sites around the web and consuming many of the development books and videos available on the market but for me, there has always been something missing.
Although Apple’s Developer Documentation is a fantastic resource, and there are many other, extremely useful (and great) blogs around the web to help the seasoned developer, I wanted a different kind of resource.
I wanted a development blog that was focused on getting back to basics. A blog that assumed nothing about it’s readers and one focused on instilling and refreshing those programming skills that I let atrophy over the years. I wanted something to guide me on my journey from first principles to distributing my own app via the App Store. I wanted something that motivated me to take action.
So what to do? Sit there and hope? Wait for a site to appear that magically answered all my needs? Or step up? Choose to be a participant rather than an observer. Choose to produce something that would help others in my position.
I think, by the fact that you are reading this post, you will already know my choice. I have chosen to contribute. To participate. To get involved. I have chosen to produce this site, the development website I wanted when I was getting started. I really hope you like.
~ Andy