Today I bought "Server Side Swift with Vapor" from Ray Wenderlich to get me off the ground from a programming perspective. While I have a programming degree (long, long, long ago at Glasgow University), I don't have experience of developing in Swift 4.x - kind of a downer when I'm trying to build an app & service based upon it!

I'll post some musings as I work my way through the book, however as they say it's time to roll up my sleeves and start coding - stay tuned :)

Amongst family summer holidays and work I've been thinking about what my little software project should be written in and how it should run.

My criteria are relatively straightforward (I think): * It must be a modern coding language * It must be easy to write, maintain and debug * It should be possible for mobile applications to be developed with as little recoding effort as possible (Not easy perhaps) * It should run on just about anything (no ties to a specific vendor platform) * It should NOT be Java (I have a love/hate relationship with Java)

So taking into account all of the above criteria, I spent several weeks researching the various languages and stacks, giving seriosu thought about what to use.

I think I've settled on the following for the server side: * Swift 4.x running server side * Vapor 3.x to run swift * API umbrella sitting between the backend and web/mobile applications

I can easily run Vapor and Swift on my MacBook Pro, allowing me to develop locally and push to my private gitlab repo.

For mobile client applications I am still not convinced what to do - it ultimately depends on how many prospective users of the app will be using iOS or Android. I will defer on this for now and do some skunkworks polling on forums specific to the community that I'm trying to target.

## What's this all about?

_Well, first a little bit of history about me..._

I have been working for a long (long) time as an independent IT consultant, focussing on IT Security, primarily strategy and architecture. While I find this hugely rewarding work (and it pays well), there is nothing I can publicly say "I did that" or "I built that", such is the nature of my line of work.

I also want keep my skills relevant as the world moves ever more rapidly into the mobile app + service model.

So I have an idea for a service fronted by a mobile app and possibly native apps and maybe even a browser app thrown in for good measure.

_Did I tell you I like challenge? :)_

What is this service etc that I want to build? Well, that I will keep to myself until (I hope) we get to MVP.

I have a LOT to learn and get better at - new programming language(s), cloud app stacks, cloud infrastructure, code management, project management, sales, marketing and whatever else a one-man-band needs to get his crazy idea off the ground!

So I intend to post here frequently, documenting my progress - warning it may be slow and infrequent!