This is my blog. There are many like it but this one is mine.
My name’s Eric Savage, and I’ve debated whether or not to have a blog for a while, and decided to give it a shot. The decision wasn’t a matter of risking a blow to my ego if I didn’t get enough readers. It also was not a matter of someday becoming a self-sustaining “pajama blogger”, as I can think of few things less rewarding to me than offering nothing but commentary. There were three main questions involved:
1. Can I do it?
Can I really build the discipline to write something on a regular basis? My money is on “not likely”, but I’m an optimist, and I think it’s worth a shot.
2. What to write about?
“Write what you know” is probably some famous quote I’m failing to attribute. What I know is software development. Not all of it of course, it’s a pretty variegated profession, like law or medicine or engineering. I’ve staked my claim in the unsafe fringe territory of user-facing business software. This is a place where purists are disappointed, progress is slow and messy, and unsavory characters lurk in every corner. On the other hand, it’s the nexus of the industry. The brilliant minds at work tuning database indexing algorithms and packing and finding a way to pack an extra thousand transistors onto a chip ultimately get their paychecks from people that just want to check their email or put a picture of their dog on myspace. Blogging about software is inevitably going to be dry, but I’ll see what I can do.
I also know bits and pieces about other things, so I’m sure those will make their way in here, and of course there’s probably going to be some uninformed opinions and maybe even videos of bears bouncing of trampolines, if you’re lucky.
3. What not to write about?
Politics and religion, because even though I try to keep up on both, I really don’t have the willpower to discuss it with people I don’t know.
However, the real impetus for deciding to start a blog was that I noticed I was finding more and more answers to my technical questions on blogs. The old model was to post your problem to a forum and hope for an answer. A search for most tricky problems would return such an exchange between others. But lately I’ve been getting many more results for people that solved the problem themselves and figured that others might find it useful. I’ve always enjoyed helping people solve problems and mentoring, and this is a pretty good way to do both.