Facebook has become so cluttered with the latest site redesign that it’s pretty much useless for expressing anything other than vapid, passing thoughts. So maybe the silver lining is that it will motivate me to post more on Arcadia. Like this week’s really big news:

My team, the creators of communication-related network software, formerly an odd part of Berbee Information Networks, and lately an even more poorly-understood part of CDW Corporation, has spun off to create our own company, Singlewire Software. (Yes, the press releases went out on April 1, but no, it’s not a joke.)

We’re extremely excited about this change. We can now focus all our energy on our software, and organize our day-to-day existence in a way that makes sense for a software company. And we feel more comfortable in a smaller, more entrepreneurial and collegial company, than in a large corporation. I just love the fact that suddenly I know and communicate regularly with everyone in the company.

There are, of course, a lot of challenges involved in making this new venture successful, but we have a great team assembled to face them, and are going to really enjoy doing it. Knowing that each of our efforts now has such a large impact on the direction and success of the whole company really changes how I feel about getting up and going to work in the morning. It’s truly invigorating and motivating. I’ve been missing this level of enthusiasm for a long while.

It’s also a big relief to be able to just talk about it finally! We were all brought in on the planning and preparation process at the beginning of February (during a team gathering before our annual user group meeting in Squaw Valley), and signed non-disclosure agreements because of the sensitive nature of transactions like this. As the closing date got nearer, it became harder to act as if nothing was going on—especially once we started having meetings to learn about our new benefits programs and to sign up for things like health insurance!

There have been a few bumps in the road as we transition to our new infrastructure and systems, but overall I’m impressed with how smoothly everything is progressing. We’re renting our current office space for a while as we look for our own location, and that continuity is quite helpful. There were plenty of technical, financial, and legal issues to sort out; having to worry about abruptly moving at the same time would have been a major pain.

Anyway, I’m thrilled that we’re now in charge of our own fate, and look forward to defining ourselves, striving to succeed on our own merits, and—definitely not least—to getting back to writing code and finishing off the next releases of our software!

Well, the new edition’s been out for a few weeks, and I am happily making my way through it. The wait was painful, but a worthy update has been the result. So far the best major new content has been the chapter on Generics. I really wish I’d had this two years ago, it would have saved me hours of pain trying to figure out some of the subtleties for myself, from scattered sources and cryptic compiler errors.

So, definitely, pick up a copy of the new edition and read it all again, making up for lost time.

It looks great! My only disappointment was that I received just one copy. I know things have been scaling back since the Swing book (when all three revision authors got ten copies each). Upon finishing the Developer’s Notebook I got five. But one copy? I want one for reference, of course, and I’d always like to be able to send one to my parents. Well, maybe more are on the way later, or I’ll just have to buy a copy out of the vast royalty stream I can always dream of…

But really, I’m thrilled to have the book, and hope many people will find it interesting and useful. It was definitely fun working with Tim and Ryan to put it together.