So I sit here on the eve of the 2007 Worldwide Developer’s Conference, finding myself programming before my head hits the pillow. Actually, programming is what I’ve been doing on-and-off over the past few weeks, more-so than designing (for myself, I’ve been keeping busy otherwise). This is a topic I’ve covered in the past—striking that ever fluctuating balance between programmer and designer. It has once again graced the front of mind because of an undertaking that has been the focus of my programming energies. (Sounds really weird when I put it that way, but I’ll leave it.)

If you asked me I’d be making web applications when I thought up Revyver a year ago, you’d get my usual reaction — o_O? Taking a quick trip down memory lane once again, I only knew enough PHP to get me by when hacking my way through a WordPress theme. Actually, all the PHP I knew was template related, as that’s the extent that I had used it at Facebook.

However, that’s not the case anymore. I am developing an application. No, I’m not shitting you.

I’m quite happy to say that I’ve been captured and taken hostage by the agile development movement. Whether or not I’m using Django, Rails, CakePHP is not the issue at hand. Rather, it’s the fact that I’ve found a way to produce ideas in a way that doesn’t manage to confuse the hell out of me and doesn’t hit that threshold of “taking-so-much-time-that-I-get-discouraged-from-continuing.” I’ve been blessed with an ability to learn something quickly, although the drawback and balance to that is that I never seem to become an expert at anything. Jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none, you can say. It’s frustrating sometimes to be honest. I have this personality when it comes to work that I like to manage all aspects of a project, that’s my business side. Then you have my design side, my entrepreneurial idea generating side and finally this new programming side. It’s quite… much.

Brining the last article into play, you can mark all the times before today that I’ve said I’m a designer-programmer hybrid as irrelevant. Building this app, has been quite a challenge and a welcome one at that. Although, to any seasoned developer, it’s probably something that could be finished in the span of a few hours, hence why I won’t disclose much other than the fact that you’ll need a Wii with a certain game to use it. ;)

So to end the monologue, I’d like to pose a question. I saw some of my old co-workers talking about how hard it was to find a “designer slash programmer” types these days, playing off of the recent DesignerSlashModel parody. What has the experience been like for the designers amongst you learning programming or vice versa? Do you like the fact that you’re a hybrid? Or would you rather be a master-of-one?