Wandering in the wilderness and totally excited about it.
As a child I used to go camping every summer with my family. We’d always go to the same campground and so after awhile it became very familiar to me. Though I was comfortable there, I was constantly exploring and discovering new hidden treasures not seen before. Sometimes I’d find myself out alone in the middle of the forest, far from anything or anyone. I admit, sometimes when that happened, it was a little bit scary but totally exciting at the same time.
When we started developing Ember, neither Harold nor I had any experience developing for the iPhone and it had been a few years since I had last programmed in Objective-C. For us, this was all new territory. It was time to go exploring. I knew there were several areas we needed to figure out on how to actually implement and so that’s where I begin. I started by creating simple prototype throw away applications that exercised the bit of functionality I was interested in discovering. As each prototype progressed the next one typically built on the one before it. All said and done, I created eleven different prototypes exploring at a basic level the various features we’d need to implement in the actual product.
Often times, during development of these prototypes I’d literally get out of my chair and jump up and down with glee. The kids certainly enjoyed those times as dad went a bit wild. After recovering, I’d take little screencasts of whatever it was that had me so excited and send them off to Harold so he could share in the discovery and excitement. Having something start to come together only drove our excitement further.
Those many years ago as child in the wilderness I felt like I was king of the forest. I knew so many areas like the back of my hand and was at complete ease there. I only got that way because of the exploration I had done. When Harold and I started to build the actual application that would become the product I also felt pretty familiar and at ease with what was required because I had already done a significant amount of exploring and discovery. That’s not to say that there weren’t scary undiscovered bits as the application progressed but I knew without a doubt that we could get through them and have as much fun as we did initially discovering how it all worked.
