00:00:09 ◼ ► So I am increasingly having the feeling that I am distinctly middle-aged, which is perhaps
00:00:22 ◼ ► And it's one of those things, you know, when you're young, you think about being old and
00:00:33 ◼ ► And as part of that, I feel like is you get into this place where, at least for me, I start
00:00:37 ◼ ► to think about the sort of, I don't know, the starts and the ends of things when you, a bit
00:00:46 ◼ ► And so I think about the early parts of my career and I think about, you know, start to
00:01:00 ◼ ► iOS development, I did not expect that I would necessarily be doing this still, you know, and
00:01:05 ◼ ► certainly not in the indie kind of solo way that I did it for so long and to some degree
00:01:18 ◼ ► these midlife sort of thought trains that sometimes I find myself on recently, like kind of, what
00:01:24 ◼ ► are the attributes of me or broadly, like a person who is able to do this kind of work for
00:01:45 ◼ ► And in some ways, when I think moving sort of the going forward perversion of it is like,
00:01:50 ◼ ► what are the things about myself that if I start to lose interest in or diminish my ability
00:01:56 ◼ ► in, what would likely be the things that would limit my ability to continue doing this?
00:02:01 ◼ ► Because I say this too, because it's something that having been doing this job for so long,
00:02:07 ◼ ► it very much comes in waves with my level of motivation, excitement, like how keen I am
00:02:18 ◼ ► And the first time I went through one of the troughs in that feeling, it was really scary
00:02:28 ◼ ► And then it worked its way back up and it's come up and down, up and down many, many times
00:02:34 ◼ ► But I think because of that, it's useful to also just think about, it's like, what are the
00:02:41 ◼ ► Because there have definitely been times when I strongly considered getting a different job.
00:02:46 ◼ ► You know, not necessarily being an iOS developer was always going to be in the cards because
00:02:51 ◼ ► But, you know, there were times when I thought about getting a jobby job and like, you know,
00:02:55 ◼ ► starting to work for someone else and sometimes that could be coincident with, you know, the
00:02:59 ◼ ► financial aspects of the business not going great or can be with, you know, sort of policy
00:03:08 ◼ ► But I think broadly, it's, I've kept at it and I think I was trying to come up with like
00:03:21 ◼ ► But, you know, essentially it's like the things that are essential to keep this for longevity
00:03:26 ◼ ► or if you're new to iOS development or especially to indie development, like what are the things
00:03:30 ◼ ► that you should be trying to cultivate in yourself to be able to have a career that would potentially
00:03:40 ◼ ► And I think I came up with these kind of like five things, being creative, be curious, be
00:03:56 ◼ ► I'm to the point now, my glasses journey, where my focus distance of what I can read without
00:04:18 ◼ ► But like the first time I was at, I was at Curtis's conference in Philly and I real, and I learned
00:04:26 ◼ ► that I should not eat a cheese steak at like midnight because I was up all night with a stomach
00:04:46 ◼ ► One thing that I think matters a lot is, you know, there's a lot of programmers out there
00:04:56 ◼ ► You know, you don't, being a programmer, you get pretty good money for the amount of work
00:05:02 ◼ ► it is and the amount of qualification you need, which in both cases, not a lot and not a lot.
00:05:10 ◼ ► Like, so it's, as a profession, programming in general, it has a pretty good bang for the buck.
00:05:15 ◼ ► And so it's pretty easy to keep that up for the long term because it's a pretty good living for not
00:05:30 ◼ ► Those are the kind of people who they go and they do their job, that they could do a good job,
00:05:37 ◼ ► They're not really ever tempted to do anything in their free time related to programming.
00:05:42 ◼ ► Then there's the kind of people who are so motivated by programming itself kind of for its own sake
00:05:57 ◼ ► you know, having certain techniques or processes they want to use or new tools they want to try,
00:06:08 ◼ ► It almost boils down to, like, you know, one of the things that people ask me sometimes,
00:06:13 ◼ ► like if they're curious about programming as a hobby or just as a thing, like whether they can do it or not.
00:06:19 ◼ ► The process of programming is a whole bunch of kind of a grind and a series of frustrations of things like not working
00:06:33 ◼ ► going to Stack Overflow and looking up answers and trying to figure out, like, how do you do this?
00:06:40 ◼ ► And a lot of that can be quite a grind and it can be quite discouraging when you hit a bunch of those walls.
00:06:45 ◼ ► And then what happens is eventually you get something to work or you finish the task that you went there to do.
00:06:57 ◼ ► And the question is, does that fulfillment, does, like, does the boost you get, the satisfaction you get from completing it or making it work,
00:07:18 ◼ ► And so, what I always tell people is, like, if you are motivated, if you get a bunch of satisfaction out of it working and out of you having built that thing,
00:07:27 ◼ ► and if it's enough to get past all that grind over and over again that's just the process of software development,
00:07:35 ◼ ► But I think there's different tolerances there, different levels of how much that motivates you.
00:07:43 ◼ ► One level is, you can, if you're motivated a little bit by that, you can be a working programmer.
00:07:50 ◼ ► But you're probably not going to love it enough to, like, do it in your free time at all or do side projects and stuff like that.
00:07:54 ◼ ► And I think if that's your level of loving programming, you're going to have a harder time as an indie.
00:08:10 ◼ ► if that is such a motivating factor for you that you just, like, you feel alive, you're like, yes.
00:08:16 ◼ ► Like, I, Tip always knows whenever she hears me clap like that, like, she's like, oh, he got something working.
00:08:22 ◼ ► Because that's like, I'll say, you know, in my office alone, like, she's in the next room and I'll be in my office and I'll be, I'll go like, yes.
00:08:30 ◼ ► And I feel like if you have that level of satisfaction when you get stuff working, that helps being an indie.
00:08:40 ◼ ► Because being an indie, you lack a lot of the structures and motivations and pressures of a day job.
00:08:49 ◼ ► You know, a day job, if you don't do the work, you'll lose your job and you'll lose your money.
00:09:01 ◼ ► You have to be more intrinsically motivated as an indie because there's no structure around you whatsoever.
00:09:07 ◼ ► There is no one looking over your shoulder to say, hey, are you, like, working or are you just goofing off on your computer?
00:09:17 ◼ ► And you have to be motivated to do the kind of work that being an indie requires you to do.
00:09:27 ◼ ► But you have to be, first and foremost, you have to like development enough to be able to do the development work yourself with your own intrinsic motivation on how exactly you get that done and how you stick with it long term.
00:09:41 ◼ ► And if you don't like programming enough to have a lot of intrinsic motivation for that, then I think it's probably not long term for you unless you can outsource the coding to somebody else.
00:09:54 ◼ ► Sure. And I think even there's just the element that, like, the indie side of it in particular feels very like it always starts as a side project.
00:10:03 ◼ ► Like, almost by definition, in some ways, it's the sense of it's not a business until it is.
00:10:17 ◼ ► And so, especially if you're coming, almost everyone I know who's made a run of this, it's like, they don't, it's not like they're raising a ton of money.
00:10:24 ◼ ► I mean, there are a few people I know who sort of like have, you know, had a severance package or something where you'll have kind of like, they have a little bit of a nest egg or they used to work at a company that, you know, had a big exit or something.
00:10:36 ◼ ► But generally, it's, it's your, you have to want to work on it in the same way that you would if it was a side project that you got home from work from and then you still had the interest in continuing to work doing similar kinds of things.
00:10:49 ◼ ► But in your own time, you have to enjoy it enough in its own right, maybe that, yeah, and then it's some of the aspects of that are the, you know, the degree to which you are, you know, you, the payoffs of the successes versus the failures.
00:11:03 ◼ ► But even just, there's something, I guess you have to enjoy what you, the process as well in a way that is just an attribute of a person that I'm, it's, and it's always, I don't know if you could cultivate, like to some degree you could probably cultivate that.
00:11:15 ◼ ► But I think increasingly I have that sense of like some people are just kind of, I don't know, we're wired in a way that makes this work.
00:11:21 ◼ ► And there's other people who I think would find it just, you know, it would be very frustrating or overwhelming or difficult in a way that would just not make it a great fit for them.
00:11:32 ◼ ► Yeah. And I think in general, like when, when you're looking at like something that you can do long term, if every single thing that you start in that, like if every day or every time you have to start tasking that, it feels like a huge grind.
00:11:50 ◼ ► But whereas if you're like, like for me, if I don't write code for a long enough time, my brain gets restless and I'm like, I want to use my brain.
00:12:02 ◼ ► Like I'm not the kind of person who can go on vacation and just turn my brain off for more than maybe four or five days.
00:12:08 ◼ ► Like I, like I just, I want to like, I want to be building, I want to be working, I want to be, especially I like a certain interval.
00:12:17 ◼ ► Like I, I, I actually like writing code at least, you know, every couple of weeks just because I start getting restless without it.
00:12:25 ◼ ► And, and, you know, if you're not that kind of person, again, it's not to say that you can't do this, but that maybe, maybe like a different version of that role is better for you.
00:12:34 ◼ ► Maybe one where you are not the programmer of your project or you are, you are not the only programmer of your project.
00:12:38 ◼ ► But, you know, some, some other role might be, might be better for you because you have to find something for longevity that you actually are comfortable doing long term, that you actually enjoy enough to push yourself through.
00:12:51 ◼ ► Because look, even, even me, you know, loving programming, there's times when I'm tired.
00:13:00 ◼ ► Like if it's some, some, you know, real grind work of like, oh, I got to fix this really annoying bug or, you know, got to rewrite the stupid S3 class again.
00:13:08 ◼ ► You know, like, which I know is a self-created problem, but like, you know, there's, there's, there's, it isn't to say that the work is always fun, but the general idea of programming, like I love it enough that I am motivated to do it.
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00:14:35 ◼ ► So if I'm now at a place where I'm thinking like, okay, what does it look like for me to keep doing this, you know, with longevity into the future?
00:14:42 ◼ ► It's like I tried to think of, okay, what are the attributes that I need to be cultivating in myself?
00:14:46 ◼ ► What are the things that got me here that can kind of hopefully be helpful as things that if I keep doing or when my interest, you know, wanes or I feel frustrated or I'm struggling, like the things will likely get me out.
00:15:05 ◼ ► And when I say that, I think it's the creativity part of that is the funny aspect of being comfortable and desirous of not knowing how something is going to turn out.
00:15:16 ◼ ► Like there is a, I get a thrill when I open Xcode and I do a final new project, you know, whether that's a little prototype thing or a whole new actual project.
00:15:31 ◼ ► Like there's that sense of the unknown there that is just inherent in the creative process that you have to, you know, in development, you are starting from nothing and creating something.
00:15:41 ◼ ► And that is, can be thrilling and exciting, but it can also be really daunting if you have to, if you don't enjoy that, that, that, that uncertainty.
00:15:50 ◼ ► And so I think that's something that I noticed in myself recently too, is sometimes I feel more like, like I'm, you know, reaching for the new thing a little bit less.
00:16:00 ◼ ► And it's like, hmm, that's, I, it's probably would be a wise thing for me to make sure that I continue to find ways to do new things because that newness and the creativity that's involved in that is like a good muscle that I should make sure that I don't let get weak.
00:16:15 ◼ ► Because if I, if it does, I think the spark that comes from that is unlike, you know, it is something that I would sorely miss in my, in my work.
00:16:24 ◼ ► I think that novelty is important in general for keeping, keeping you interested in something long-term.
00:16:32 ◼ ► And this, I mean, this applies to so many things in life, but like, you know, part of, you know, when people have like a midlife crisis, a lot of that is they haven't had novelty in a long time and they're seeking it somehow.
00:16:44 ◼ ► You know, and, and we have to, we have to be aware of that kind of thing in our work as well.
00:16:48 ◼ ► When you're doing something for the longterm, you have to, you have to kind of find ways to, to constantly like be able to try new things and to, to explore new areas.
00:17:04 ◼ ► Sometimes that can take the form of doing a new feature in your app or trying a new kind of thing in your app, a new, trying a new framework, trying a new tool, trying to make a whole new feature using an API you've never used before or using a device capability you've never used before.
00:17:20 ◼ ► And I think it's just, it's just, it's an important part of this process of like that novelty is, I think there's an even better word for it.
00:17:33 ◼ ► Like don't necessarily go down the road where I was so interested in creating novelty that I like launched 56 apps in like eight years.
00:17:45 ◼ ► And I think it is my development career has gotten a lot better since my creativity in my, you know, like in terms of creating new things has been much more focused into a couple of particular areas.
00:17:57 ◼ ► It's like if you're doing, if you're doing the same thing a bit too much, then that's, that's not going to do good things for you.
00:18:01 ◼ ► It's good to have to learn something new and have to explore and be creative in terms of going from nothing to something because that, that transfer, that transformation is where you get the point where you, you know, you clap your hands and are like, yeah, I did it.
00:18:22 ◼ ► And I think being curious is in this context is about, I kept thinking of it as almost like being uncomfortable with not knowing something that like you, you want.
00:18:39 ◼ ► You always have the thought of like, hmm, I wonder if, you know, I wonder if this, I wonder, I wonder why that's even sometimes a better question.
00:18:48 ◼ ► I wonder why they're, you know, you look at someone else's design and you don't just think, oh, that's nice.
00:18:54 ◼ ► And I think that curiosity, I mean, sometimes maybe it bleeds into a bit of novelty as well,
00:18:58 ◼ ► but it's that sense of wanting to always learn something that you don't feel sort of static in your knowledge and ability.
00:19:06 ◼ ► Because I think the nature of being, developing an expertise in something is it can be really easy to just rely on the expertise you have.
00:19:14 ◼ ► And this is something like, I mean, a very concrete example is I remember when Swift first came out.
00:19:24 ◼ ► I'd been doing this for, you know, not as long as all the Mac developers, but I'd been doing it for long enough that I felt like I was very good at it.
00:19:31 ◼ ► And I remember having at some point to kind of force myself to learn Swift, to be curious about Swift, even though it was uncomfortable, because I felt myself like this is not going to go well for you, both tactically or in terms of my, just, you know, sort of academically and my, in terms of my ability to learn and grow.
00:19:52 ◼ ► So that if I stopped learning new technologies and new frameworks and new things, it's not going to be good for my brain and its ability to perform in the way that I wanted to, in the way that it's going to need to, in some ways, to be able to continue doing this job for a long time.
00:20:07 ◼ ► You know, if at this point, you know, many years on, if I hadn't, if I still hadn't learned Swift, I could probably still be doing my job.
00:20:14 ◼ ► Like in terms of most of what I do, um, I mean, maybe not widget kit, but the rest of it, um, you know, a lot of it I could do in objective C, but I would be really at a massive disadvantage for so many reasons.
00:20:25 ◼ ► And so like that curiosity and that being okay with not knowing something and then your answer to not knowing something to be taking the app, taking the extra effort to then learn is just such an important aspect of being able to continue doing this in the long run.
00:20:39 ◼ ► Oh yeah. I mean, cause you know, this business is not one that stands still. You have to be constantly learning and constantly, you know, upgrading your knowledge and, or moving it to the next, you know, the next big thing or the next tools or the next languages or whatever to have your career keep going.
00:20:58 ◼ ► You know, you have to be constantly applying continuous power in like learning, keeping yourself ahead, being willing to change. Um, because like you will, at some point, you know, your skills will slowly fade into irrelevance.
00:21:15 ◼ ► Now that in many cases, like you can do an entire career, you know, it, with a certain skillset, as long as you're okay with that gradual fade, you know, you can, for instance, like if, if I, you know, I came up learning PHP, making web app backends, there's enough business out there writing PHP, web app backends.
00:21:35 ◼ ► I could, I could, I could have made that my entire career over time, the number of jobs that are out there would go down.
00:21:42 ◼ ► And the, I think the interestingness of those jobs would rapidly go down, you know, way, you know, way more than, than the number of jobs.
00:21:51 ◼ ► But if I was just like a career programmer, just saying, you know, I just, I just want to do my job, get paid, go home, that would be fine.
00:21:56 ◼ ► There's lots of work for PHP web apps out there, but the cutting edge, where things are, where the, where new growth is, where exciting stuff is, where consumer tech goes, that stuff all moves faster than that.
00:22:09 ◼ ► And so if I was focused on those areas, I would have to keep up and I would have to keep upgrading.
00:22:14 ◼ ► And so, yeah, I went through a similar thing, obviously, with Objective-C and Swift, that's, that was a huge thing.
00:22:19 ◼ ► And then same thing with now, with Swift UI, you know, I, I think you can, you can make the same argument there of like UI kit, you can, if you want to write UI kit forever, you can, there will be, there will be work for you and it will keep working probably for the rest of our careers.
00:22:32 ◼ ► But if you want to be like where things are going and if you want to be better prepared for, you know, the newness, the cutting edge, new applications, new APIs, Swift UI is probably where you should be.
00:22:48 ◼ ► And I think then another aspect, and I guess the third thing that is, is the, another aspect of this, but it's related, is the sense of being resilient and being comfortable that things aren't always going to turn out the way you want them to.
00:23:03 ◼ ► And I spent lots of time becoming like, it's like understanding how iMessage apps work.
00:23:13 ◼ ► I mean, honestly, a little bit more recently, like a lot of the work I did on Vision Pro, like at this point feels like it hasn't gone anywhere.
00:23:21 ◼ ► But I think there's an element of being resilient to those disappointments is an essential part of being able to have longevity in our careers.
00:23:30 ◼ ► Like, as much as we can, you know, like, we hope for success, but we are confident that eventually we will run into failures.
00:23:39 ◼ ► And we will launch things that don't go anywhere or we will, that can be at like the big level of like, you know, I've spent months and months, like six months working on an app that launches and goes nowhere.
00:23:50 ◼ ► Or at the micro level, I've done the, like, you spend half an hour trying to build something.
00:24:01 ◼ ► And like, both of those disappointments, both of those failures are things that are going to be happening consistently throughout your career.
00:24:08 ◼ ► And so there's an element of just being resilient to that, which takes, I don't know, I don't really know what it is, but it's like having a thick, it's a little bit of having a thick skin, but it isn't like you just need to ignore them.
00:24:18 ◼ ► But I think it's just understanding that that's part of the process, that the difficulty is how you will, you can't avoid it.
00:24:25 ◼ ► And so you just have to accept that it is part and parcel of this, and it isn't a reflection that you're a bad developer and a bad person and terrible businessman or whatever those were, like the voices that I sometimes will get in my head about these things.
00:24:44 ◼ ► And so that's just part of the process, and you just have to be resilient as a result against that feeling.
00:24:55 ◼ ► And by this, I mean sort of like being able to, when those failures come, like reflect, being comfortable with looking at the times that things have gone well and the times that things haven't gone well and trying to learn something from them.
00:25:22 ◼ ► Like, you know, we can hopefully other people can learn from our experiences, but we can be reflective and we can look at things we do or think about what's on our mind when things go well, when things don't go well.
00:25:38 ◼ ► And I think that reflectiveness is something that is an important aspect of being able to move forward and get better and to continue to do that over a long period.
00:25:47 ◼ ► It's not, you know, to try and only make each kind of mistake, you know, maybe two or three times, not five or six times.
00:25:56 ◼ ► Yeah, I was, you know, the old classic thing is, you know, don't make the same mistake twice.
00:25:59 ◼ ► It's like, well, I usually make at least mistake at least three or four times, but let's try and leave it to three or four.
00:26:07 ◼ ► Like, that's because, you know, you have to, you know, as you were saying, like, you know, not everything you try is going to work.
00:26:15 ◼ ► So I think you do have to be, you know, you do to be reflective and you have to be comfortable admitting what you did that didn't work and being open-minded as to why it might not have worked.
00:26:27 ◼ ► And certainly, you know, taking feedback from people that can help you, you know, if you can't see why something didn't work, maybe ask around, you know, maybe ask some friends or ask some users.
00:26:34 ◼ ► Like, why didn't this, you know, why didn't this work the way I thought it would or why didn't this, you know, kind of take off the way I thought it would?
00:26:41 ◼ ► And, yeah, you have to be willing to ask those questions and be strong enough to hear the answers and process them.
00:26:52 ◼ ► And I think I will say, too, to that degree is I think I don't think I would have been able to be in this career for as long as I have without finding people in the industry like yourself who I'm able to talk about this kind of stuff with.
00:27:07 ◼ ► Because I think it is so essential, like, one of the sort of inherent in the word indie, right, is the sense of independence, of being a little bit kind of by yourself.
00:27:16 ◼ ► But I think it is essential to be able to in terms of be to be effective with your reflection, to be doing it with someone else, to be talking about things with people who care about you, who, you know, who want to want the best for you, but who are also able to be honest with you as well.
00:27:29 ◼ ► And I think I have a number of people in this community who I have those kind of relationships with, and it's super helpful to learn from.
00:27:37 ◼ ► And I think it short-circuits a lot of the kind of bad habits or repetitions or things that I could fall into otherwise.
00:27:47 ◼ ► I think you mentioned this earlier, but it's this sense of I think there is something inherent in this kind of work of not being comfortable doing the same thing every day.
00:28:00 ◼ ► Like, if you want that, go and be a, you know, like a, I guess, like a standard software developer at a, like a mid-sized company doing some kind of stable, you know, in some kind of stable industry.
00:28:15 ◼ ► And you will be able, and you can likely find some, you know, fulfillment and stability in that.
00:28:22 ◼ ► I know I need to be doing interesting, new, novel, dynamic, you know, I need to be failing and succeeding in equal measure on a regular basis.
00:28:30 ◼ ► And that restlessness of if I have too many days that feel like they're the same, I don't enjoy it.
00:28:37 ◼ ► And I think that is part of what's allowed me to keep doing this for the long period because when things get stagnant, when things get a little bit too samey, I get itchy, I don't like it, and I find something else to push things forward.
00:28:51 ◼ ► And that creates that activation energy that you need to get over the hump and not get stuck.
00:29:02 ◼ ► Like if you just try to keep up, as we were saying earlier, you are forced almost to engage with lots of novelty and to produce it and to explore it.
00:29:10 ◼ ► And when you are working for yourself, I find that incredibly valuable of like, especially like, you know, working alone inside my house.
00:29:17 ◼ ► Like if I'm just doing the same thing every single day alone in my house, like that's kind of a lot to take.