| I am not working in industry; I'm such a loner programmer that I struggle in industry. But since my wife likes her work, I have space to write the software I want to write. My first goal is to make that software good enough and useful enough to create an engineering-only company like Hwaci, the company that does SQLite and Fossil. If I succeed at that, I'll see about trying to pull in enough money to retire early and do charity work through my church. But I have another goal for while I'm still in industry. I want to change our industry such that it is a professional industry, with a code of ethics, to where we create software that serves users, not our employers or government. This means fighting against slurping up user data, serving ads, and other ways that software disobeys users in favor of obeying its creators. I even created a Twitter account to show some of those things. [1] Yes, that means an uphill battle against basically all of Big Tech, and I don't expect to win. But if I make people think about it, I'll take that as a win. But regardless, I feel strongly about it because users depend on us to make software that will serve them. If we don't, no one will. Uncle Bob Martin talked about this. [2] (That link starts at a good point, but the whole talk is worth watching.) So that's my goal: make good software and change the industry for the better. Lofty, yes, but I'll be satisfied by completing one of those goals. [1]: https://twitter.com/software_crimes [2]: https://youtu.be/ecIWPzGEbFc?t=3557 |