Software to Die For
Before I switched to being a full-time developer in 2010, I worked as a user-interface designer for seven years. Something that always bothered me during that time is that so much of what I was learning was just how to use Photoshop really well. After I switched to development, I was hesitant to ever invest that much in just learning a big software package again. “What if I choose wrong? And waste all those years of learning by switching to another software package?” I asked myself. Recently, I’ve re-evaluated that decision, based on my analysis of the market share of major creative applications. It turns out if I’d just chosen which software I want to learn ten years ago, for most categories, it would still be the same today. For some categories, it would still be the same if I’d chosen twenty years ago, and it’s often the first software that was ever introduced to solve a problem, even if that application is over 30 years ago, that’s still the best choice today. So it turns out I was overcorrecting relative to the risk in learning big complex packages, so now I’m investing in doing it again.
This is the list of software I’ve chosen to learn:
- 3D Computer Graphics: Blender, Cinema 4D
- Digital Audio Workstation: Ableton Live, Logic Pro
- Motion Graphics: After Effects
- Non-Linear Editing System: Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro
- Raster Graphics Editor: Photoshop
- Spreadsheet: Excel
- Text Editor: Vim, Visual Studio Code
- Vector Graphics Editor: Illustrator
Some of these I already know quite well (Vim, Photoshop), and some I’ve barely touched (Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro). I’m not happy with the duplication, and frankly, this is probably just too much for one person. Learning any one of these applications is an lifetime of work, let alone all of them. But I can’t decide what to cut, so here we are.