I want to talk about two specific moments of inspiration that are related.
On June 2nd, 2014 I tuned in to the online stream of Apple's World Wide Developers Conference. For years I try my best to watch Apple announcements and keynotes live and that morning was no exception. This Developers Conference was unique where there was an actual focus on DEVELOPERS.
There was plenty of jargon being thrown around that I wasn't understanding. Instead of tuning out the noise, something stirred inside of me and I was intrigued. The audience gasped when Craig Federighi said "We've used Objective-C for 20 years, and we love it. But we wondered what we could do without the baggage of C."
"We have a new programming language"
I sensed that something important was about to happen. Apple announced Swift and announced soon after that the language was to be open source. The feeling in the room seemed to be electric and it was contagious.
The prospect of Apple creating a tool so powerful and complicated is fascinating to me. Its one thing to create phones, tablets, and computers but it never crossed my mind that you could create a language. Of course looking back its silly that thought had never crossed my mind, where did all of the other programming languages come from? What matters is that it was the first time I wanted to learn one.
Two days ago Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, came to Salt Lake City for a Q&A session hosted by Senator Orrin Hatch. A few years ago I got in an argument with Orrin Hatch about the Patriot Act (he wrote it) but that is neither here nor there. I went to the event and reunited with an old friend who showed me the ways of Apple long ago. I was happy that I had secured a couple tickets because I was on a wait-list for several days.
I was especially interested in Tim's thoughts concerning encryption and the future of augmented reality. He also claimed that Apple isn't interested in being the first to release a product, nor producing the most, but to make the BEST. I like that. Sure Apple's products aren't always the best but you can't argue that there is a significant level of polish to be found in everything they produce.
We may have snuck backstage only to be stopped by one of the Senator's aides. We still had our chance to say hi, shake hands, and my friend had his iphone case signed by Tim Cook in the hall afterwards.
Being in that room with such a large chunk of Utah's tech industry was electrifying. Once again Apple swooped in and inspired me to not just become a developer but to become a GREAT developer. I will carry these moments with me as when I inevitably get frustrated learning this stuff. My friend documented our adventure in his weekly vlog here:
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