The Sacred Art of Developing (One More Thing)

Introducing King of Cupertino: a Meditation on Grief, Beauty, and Code

In most conversations about software, development is reduced to tools and tasks. Codebases, frameworks, version control. But for those who have truly lived inside the act of creating, development is not merely technical. It is devotional. A quiet, often invisible practice that shapes not just the products we release into the world, but the people we become while building them.

“We shape our tools and, thereafter, our tools shape us.” — John Culkin (1967)

The song King of Cupertino was written by ALANA with Dave Etherington and Henry Binns of Zero 7/Another Sun in honor of this inner journey. It will premiere at the One More Thing Conference, held June 7 through 12 (with a sneak preview today for paid subscribers of the skeuomorphic.design newsletter) as a tribute to the soul of development, and to the spirit of the man who embodied it more fully than anyone else: Steve Jobs.

It is difficult to speak of him without emotion. For many of us, Steve wasn’t just a visionary. He was a spiritual figure. A reminder that the act of building could be holy. That obsession with detail wasn’t ego, but reverence. That what we make carries the weight of who we are. And that simplicity, when done right, isn’t minimalism. It is understanding.

This piece was created for anyone who knows that feeling. For anyone who has ever been in flow at 2 a.m., rewriting the same function until it feels right. For those who know that better design isn’t just functional, it’s moral. That elegance in software is a kind of grace.

King of Cupertino is a mourning song. A love song. A prayer. Not only for what was lost when Steve left us, but for what he left behind. It is a sonic meditation for developers who feel that ache, the longing to build with purpose, to think with elegance, to craft something that disappears so that people can feel pure delight.

Lyric: “He built bikes for our brains, put ideas on trains, yet humans above the machine….remember his line, don’t you waste any time, there is magic for you to make.”

The title carries layers. Cupertino as birthplace. Joseph of Cupertino as namesake of the levitating saint. And Steve, the king, not by coronation, but by sacrifice. He walked through fire for his work. He returned when he could have stayed away. He demanded more from himself than he ever did from others. And in doing so, he taught a generation of builders that development was not about features.

It was about restraint, discipline and knowing what NOT to build.

This piece was composed for those who still feel the silence he left behind. For those who open Xcode or Figma or Terminal with a whisper of intention. For those who understand that beauty and clarity are not decoration but ways of seeing.

Let the music carry you. Let it remind you that we are not just writing code or designing screens. We are etching a legacy of care.

Line by line. Pixel by pixel. Soul by soul.

Join me for a fireside chat at 10:30am on June 10, 2025 at the Residence Inn in Cupertino (tickets are free) where I will have the privilege of premiering King of Cupertino and reflecting with Apple’s development community on sentimental moments in Apple history. And if your eyes well up a little, that’s okay.

It means you are still human enough to remember.

Thank you for the ongoing support from my paid members to make projects like this possible so that ALANA and I can continue to bless you and the development community who we hold so dear.

Listen to King of Cupertino by ALANA, Dave Etherington and Henry Binns of Another Sun, (exclusively available to paid members today here on skeuomorphic.design)…