“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. May it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you. So you can be who you are meant to be in the first place.” - Unknown

Recently, I was thinking about starting a new Open Source project on GitHub and was making a mental run down of the languages and/or frameworks I’d make use of and I gave a start as I came to a realisation. As recently as April 30th of last year (2016) the language issue would have been set by default (and permanently if I may add) to C# and the framework would have been one of Windows Forms, WPF or ASP.NET (If I was feeling especially adventurous) and I wouldn’t have entertained the thought of using anything else as I had learnt C# and had become very familiar with it.

The realisation that I had become willing to make use of relatively new languages (to me) and frameworks I wasn’t quite comfortable with made me realise how much I’d “grown” in the latter half of the year. On the surface, it might not look like much but if you have interacted with me you’d understand how much had to have gone on underneath for me to get that point. Let me explain;

I am a die-hard C# fan, I taught myself C# from Console applications to Web applications and in all my years of using it, neither it nor the .NET framework have disappointed me. And from 2012 to 2016 anything I needed to get done software development wise, I did it in C#. Even when people came to me for advice on technologies and tools to use, I invariably gave them a C#/.NET related solution. Because of my investment in the language and underlying framework, I had boxed myself into a corner where I didn’t do anything but C# and learning other languages seemed to be a distraction from making further advances in my mastery of C# and the supporting frameworks. What I failed to realise was that while C# was a great language and .NET an excellent framework, there were some things they were either poorly optimised for or just couldn’t do.

Looking back at the Winner of April whose mantra was “C# and .NET or I can’t be bothered”, I can see just how far I have come. I now understand that progress at times isn’t gaining something new, but losing something old. Now, the mantra is “the best language, framework and tool for the task at hand (except it is PHP I’m kidding, I’m totally serious 😉 )”. Over the past nine months I have done more than just learn new languages, I have tried my hands at new software development paradigms, I have learnt to stand in a person's shoes to understand (yes, pun intended) why they hold the opinions they do, I have dipped my toes into a thousand and one things and I have come to this conclusion;

“Being able to reason without constraints is the greatest gift you can give yourself for then the whole world is open to you”.

All in all, I am grateful for who I am now and who I am becoming every day as I learn and interact with people and tools more. At this point, I feel like John Wick who can do as much damage with a pencil as with a cruise missile. The journey to being world class still continues.