Do you remember what it was like to be a teenager who never partied, never travelled, never got laid? Uh, me neither. But anyone who does can relate to how it feels to be a non-blogging software developer.
Back when I first caught wind of the rising popularity of the weblog, the whole idea was lost on me. It seemed like yet another outlet for self-absorbed Generation Y types to brag about themselves. Who had the time, let alone the desire, to read these things? Surely reading them wasn’t the point – the writers were quite happy to prattle on about the oh-so-fascinating pageantry of their day-to-day lives whether or not anyone was listening.
Then Google started to turn up more and more blogs in my search results, including searches for solutions to obscure programming problems. Clearly it wasn’t only self-absorbed Generation Y types doing the blogging — there were some self-absorbed programmers among them. Bah, I thought: who has the time, let alone the desire, to write these things?
With Google as my accomplice I soon came to be shamelessly reliant on the blogosphere for the answers to software design and coding problems. Much to my surprise I found a use for another technology that I had once dismissed as a plaything for people with too much time on their hands, RSS. I subscribed to some of my favourite blogs, like Scott Hanselman’s Computer Zen, and Jeff Atwood’s Coding Horror. From writers like them I learned solutions to problems that I didn’t know I had, and gained inspiration from great minds that not only knew their stuff but were happy to share their knowledge with others. And I did this without writing a single word of my own. Who was being self absorbed now?
Clearly, I was running out of excuses. I had the desire, I had the time (though my wife might disagree, and my boss definitely would). All I lacked was something worth blogging about. Was I really willing to prattle on about the oh-so-fascinating pageantry of my day-to-day-life, whether or not anyone was listening?
Apparently so. Well, not so much the pageantry of my day-to-day-life, but about the discoveries that I make along the way that I think are worth sharing. Hopefully Google will occasionally match one of my humble “pearls†of wisdom with someone who happens to looking for that exact piece of information. Regardless, I know that my prattling will help to educate at least one person: me. Don’t we always develop a better understanding of something when we try to explain it to another person, even a potentially non-existent reader like yourself?
