Dear Reader,

With a heavy heart today we announce our plans to move on.  An opportunity in the bay area has presented itself, and it’s too good to pass up.  We’ll be diving in head first,  disconnected from our dear Charleston Harbor, so we don’t feel it would be fair to continue to present ourselves as authoritative on what happens here. As of today we will no longer be posting as Shrimp and Bits. We’re closing up shop. 

Frankly, we’re tired of government contracting, so we leveraged our idea machine into angel funding and a spot on our cousin Al Balone’s conch until we can get settled.  You are sure to hear about it in the next few months.

Our hearts and tentacles will forever remain with Charleston Harbor.  We’ve made so many friends.  Well, Pr0wn is sort of anti-social, but he’s done as well as can be expected given his condition.   Despite the occasional death threat, we’ve been treated with legendary Charleston hospitality. And to be fair, most of the threats were against our entire species, so we know it’s not personal. 

Realistically, we’ve done all we can to make things better for developers in L’Harbour Silicone.  No, we couldn’t stop SPARC from selling out, or convince Charleston Open Source that they are neither open nor source.  Unintentionally we added to the general cacophony of hype that inflates every modest success in the confluence of the Ashley and the Cooper, but in our defense any good sea tale deserves to be embellished.

We’ve seen some fair winds and following seas.  The makeup of the Chamber of Commerce is improving.  People are making noise about gender inequality in computing.  Charleston Tech Slack has over 500 members emoticonning about low wages, traffic, and the Wild Pitch lineup. The corridor is building their third flagship. And, Capt. Jack Russell is no longer singlehandedly towing the line of teaching everyone how to code. 

There’s plenty of startup activity around the harbor and the yard.  If you have an idea, there are countless people ready to shake your hand and offer advice — some out of an instinct to school around the excitement, and some hoping to pillage what booty you are able to scrape together. Startup is the new privateering.  If one of you takes a prize, everybody wins.

If you’re an able developer who can hand, reef, and steer, you should get in on this, too.  You’ll get to build fun new stuff while demand is high.  You can always go back to writing Java for the feds or binge watching Syfy while you write code from home.

 So, keep crunking out code and hopefully more of you will take it to the bay.

Sincerely yours and Farewell,

Capt. Lil’Bit and T3h Pr0wn