Just a short while ago, a customer referred to me as an “advanced” REALbasic developer. This came as a bit of a shock to me, and I’m not entirely sure why…
You see, I’ve been working with REALbasic since 5.5, and before that I had spent many years with Quick/Visual Basic. Sure, that’s a long time in the life of RB, but I’ve never considered myself to be anything more than novice. I always assumed that since there were members of the community out there who I looked up to (Aaron Ballman, Bob Keeney, Steve Garmin, Christian Miller, Norman Palardy, Dave Wooldridge, and a few more), that I couldn’t be at or near their level.
I realize over the years I’ve dropped out of sight in the RB community, except for the occasional press releases, and product announcements, but I still follow most of what’s going on. I’ve watched silently as these great faces in the community have accomplished great things, powered forward in their respective fields, and come to be some of the most widely known names we see as REALbasic devs.
I continued to develop my skills, taking on customer contracts, playing with new features as they became available to me, helping friends with projects, and developing software for my various employers, but I never stopped to evaluate what I know or the quality of my work. At one point is that supposed to happen? At what point do you finally just stop and ask yourself: “Am I an advanced developer?” I’m still not quite sure the label fits me, but perhaps that just some form of subconscious modesty.
At any rate, I’m thankful for all the excellent customers and friends I’ve found in the REALbasic community, and I do hope to begin participating in the RS forums again. I hope to see you there.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Anthony G. Cyphers
President
CyphersTECH Consulting
Tags: advanced, community, contact, forums, realbasic, theory