Young delta heart

Deciding to give up programming (professionally).

For the last 6 years I've been working on the web getting paid to build websites, applications and services. For better or for worse I've been exposed to a multitude of disciplines and practices to get things done. I've written code because there was no-one around who could do it well, I've designed interfaces because I knew how they should work and how to best integrate them with the underlying applications.

I've struggled on for years telling myself I could do everything, that I can design and I can code not html / css I mean real programming. I've been successful, I've worked on big projects and small startups, I've made good money and I've enjoyed seeing myself achieve things that people had no confidence in me completing; because I was the programmer who said he could design, and vice versa.

I know it isn't black and white, and I know programming can at times be an order of magnitude more creative than even the hallowed designer could attain. But I'm tired of the grey garden in which I setup my store.

Just before I left the agency where I'd been able to float between disciplines to start out on my own, I decided I was tired of doing it all and I would focus on development. The one consistent love I had was Ruby and I figured programming would be a more earnest path to follow.

At first I was happy, but in the last 18 months of self employment I've become more and more confident of who I am, and that person (even though I've tried my hardest to resist) just needs to be a visual designer. I can't explain the deep seated urge, and it may turn out to be the greatest failure of my life but I need to try and see what is out there for me.

So, apart from the outstanding commitments I have for development projects I will no longer be taking on programming jobs, I will be designing interfaces and I will let my talented collaborators at Go Free Range concentrate on the development*, after all it is their unrelenting talent that has given me the courage to step out of the midway and into the traffic; my self-esteem.

Is A Designer. (Write this down). Jase — Wednesday 3rd March, 2010. 16:17pm.

*part of this challenge is proving that design can be done in a way that is truly agile.