A Huge Thank You to the Design and Development Community

As a new year starts, I always like to look back. Throughout the last half-decade of my life there have been plenty of changes and challenges to reflect upon. The more I thought about past experiences, the more I realized how much my life has been changed by the design and development community I am involved in. I think it owe that community an overdue thank you.

I’ve always shied away from the term “self-taught developer” even though it is often how a developer such as myself is categorized. I’m a bigger fan of the term “community-taught developer.” This term is born from how many people take time out of their lives to share current development trends, ideas, and best practices. Without these selfless individuals, I wouldn’t be half of the developer I am today. If you have ever wrote a technical blog post, contributed to an open source project, or shared anything you thought was interesting, THANK YOU!

There have been many individuals that have affected my career in a more personal way. Some of these people took a chance on hiring me, some took the time to walk me through something new, and some just supported me along the way. I’m proud of how many of these individuals are still some of my closest friends even after the projects are complete. No matter what your role in my career has been thus far, please accept a giant THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart.

There are a couple of people I would like to give a more targeted thank you to. The first, is my friend Brian who introduced me to this industry in the first place. Without Brian, I am convinced I would still be lost working a career that made me miserable. THANK YOU for always trusting me and changing my life in a wonderful way. The second person is Chris Coyier. I have been reading Chris’ blog CSS-Tricks forever and I feel like I have followed a very similar to path to him in terms of career development. His humor and pragmatic way of looking at technology appealed to me from day one and I can’t THANK YOU enough.

In summary, THANK YOU design and development community for everything you have given me. I have a wonderful life and you are a big part of that.

Happy New Year.