The phrase “putting all of your eggs in one basket” has always appealed to me.
Even in High School, I didn’t really hang out with a single crowd or do only a single category of things. I played intramural sports, was a part of every music group I could find, did well academically and was a part of Knowledge Bowl … essentially splitting my time up in multiple “baskets”.
Who knew that it would be the thing I was doing at home that would become my career.
Then in college I was working on my “Education Degree” (scare quotes for effect) but then spent more time working in Network Services and learning that line of work. Multiple baskets (and I should pay attention to what I spend time on … it tends to lead to where I should go).
Now I’m again splitting my eggs up between technology and agriculture. Farming and iPhones. They might seem an oil-and-water sort of thing, but I think that is good (and where real “innovation” happens — again with the scare quotes).
You are always going to have questions on where you should be spending your time and right now I’m looking at not just technology and agriculture, but between the web and iOS. It is common for the choice to never be one of mutual exclusivity, but many times of complimentary area with no right or wrong answer. This is another case of that.
I’ve simply been blown away by the reception of iOS by my family members since I encouraged by mom and brother to purchase iPhones last year. So far they are up to two iPhones, an iPod touch, and an iPad. All of them will be receiving iOS 6 updates tomorrow and I have no fear of letting them just update on their own. That, to me, is freedom. They install and uninstall software themselves and just, overall, use the devices as they are intended without my intervention.
I could not say the same for the Windows boxes and Blackberry phones that they were using before.
That makes me excited about possibly jumping into iOS development with more than just my little toe. However, iOS without the web is pretty bland and so I also continue to look at Ruby and Ruby on Rails for the backend work. However, how much time and effort do I spend on each, especially knowing that I do not know nearly enough of either to be of any use yet.
I know the platform zealots out there who declare iOS-only or web-only and they both sound silly. There is room for both and a need for both as well. However, where do I toss in an extra egg or two to get started on doing more advanced stuff? I just really don’t know.