April 2019, Notion
“It is not often that you find an app that reflects the way you think. When a piece of software feels like an extension of your mind, that’s when you know you have reached levels of peak productivity”
These were the first sentences I wrote for a blog that I intended to publish, wholly inspired by an app I had discovered a few weeks back. Notion was relatively new and unknown back then and I relished the idea behind the app. It truly felt like an extension of my mind and for the first time I felt the need to do something more, to do something meaningful because of the tool I had in my hand. That’s the beauty of tools that feel magical - they inspire you to do more. My dalliance with Notion, however, was short-lived. I had discovered the wonders of Notion when on a trip home from my college. I returned to my college a few days later, and while this is a story I intend to tell later, all you need to know now is that it was a woeful place with terrible internet. The moment I stepped into an area with sketchy internet, my picture perfect image of Notion broke into a thousand pieces, never to be assembled back again.
March 2020, Scrivener
“So why would I, an engineer, with just a few months of real world experience, start this blog? Surely, everything that I could possibly say has been said and done by a hundred others, right? Turns out what really matters is the story behind it. It is my version of things. It could be the same solution that someone else has already put out there, but when said in my voice, it will probably resonate to a few people more, and that to me, is all the more meaningful”
At the behest of my then mentor, I started writing an initial article for a blog that I intended to publish and maintain. I deeply revered him, for he was one of the best engineers I had ever met, very smart but also charmingly kind (Till date, he remains my most inspirational mentor and I always aspire to emulate him). When he advised me to start a blog, I was initially skeptical. As I had expressed in my draft above, I was not sure if I could add anything meaningful to the discourse that others hadn’t added. I had also just started working for a real world company at that time, fresh out of college. Interestingly, around the same time, I was taking a renewed interest in writing long form fiction (I had written a few novels during my school days but I had buried them on the cloud to pursue my dream of tinkering with computers instead). With the intention of writing more fiction, I discovered Scrivener, an app dedicated for long form writers. As I started tinkering with the app and indulged in my interest in storytelling, I made a deeper connection - I realised my blog would be my way of narrating my stories of technology. The beauty of storytelling is that there will be at least someone to whom your version would appeal more than anything else. With this newfound ideology, I started writing a blog only to throw all my plans into disarray a week later, as I discovered a global pandemic was going to keep us all at home for quite a while, making way for a new way of life.
February 2022, Craft
“Sometimes building apps is not about making money or receiving a promotion. It is not a step in the corporate ladder. To me, it is about passionately crafting something beautiful and meaningful. Something where you meticulously put in work everyday, caring about details that you think only you will care about, choosing those colours and fonts that make sense only to you. At times it is hard work, at times it feels pointless. But there comes a time when people look at your app and feel the care. They feel the work behind it and they experience the wonder. It is at that moment when your work becomes art and there’s no greater joy than being perceived as an artist”
I had been working at a startup where I had just shipped a huge feature along with my team. It had been a lot of work, but as we saw our work being received by people around the world, we felt a sense of gratification that was difficult to explain. I was talking with a product manager a week later and when she heard me speak about my work, she told me that I ought to put it out on the internet, on a blog or any forum where I could express the process. Around this time, I was also exploring a Notion-like app without all the perils of Notion. It was called Craft and it seemed like the perfect home for all my note taking. It was Apple-like, offline first and felt very well made. It didn’t feel like a place where I would want to keep my blog (given I was also maintaining a lot of my personal notes), but I decided to start nevertheless. It would have been the perfect start, but right around that time, I got distracted by some other larger, joyous commitments in life and soon, this blog lay in a folder, forgotten amongst all the other documents I was creating in Craft.
Present Day, Ulysses
“April 2019, Notion...”
You get the idea ;)
On all these past occasions I was often questioning myself - “Why am I making a blog? Am I adding any value? Will anyone read my blog?”
I still have all those questions - I still wonder if I can add value amidst all the amazing and resourceful blogs out there. I still wonder if people would read my blog. But after all these years of writing an opening article over and over again, there’s one question that got me going beyond all of this - why the heck have I not started a blog yet?
And that brings us here - to a new story, a new app and a new beginning. As you can tell by now, my life revolves around apps - I love apps, I love searching the App Store for new apps, I love tinkering with new apps and I also love making apps.
I want to tell people about everything I have learnt and everything I get to learn everyday as an iOS developer. I want to write about Swift, SwiftUI and so much more. But this is not just an engineering blog, I also want to talk about Apple, my love for the company and its products and the place they have in my life, my other interests and a whole lot of other things.
I am a storyteller at heart and I want to tell you all my stories - about life, love, faith and all things Apple.
Welcome to my space. I am Sharath.