Getting Started

About a year ago a coworker asked me whether I wanted to write a blog. I took a full 2 seconds to make sure I wasn't just reacting and just said - "no".

It was that clear. I am a private person by nature. Why would I want to talk to a bunch of people I don't even know? It made no sense. I mean, I could understand why some other people would want to, and even enjoyed reading some blog posts (most of which I got from friends by email), but me blogging was an idea that made no sense to me.

So what's this, then?
Well, to be honest, I'm not 100% sure myself :-)

One thing that happened is that for the last year I finally got to work in Python (IronPython to be exact). Before that I was mainly writing in C++ and in the last few years also dabbling with python for side projects. I think the effect of the community is much more important in the python ecosystem than it is in C++. I've got some thoughts on why this might be so, but that's not important for this post. Maybe it's not even true, but the fact is that I've started reading some blogs, subscribing to the ironpython mailing list, and in general I got a lot of help and ideas from other people's work.
And when I had some cool stuff I'd written, or some insight, I sometimes wanted to be able to share it.

Luckily I also started working with a friend that blogs. I really learned a lot from watching and talking to him. In this respect, I learned that not every blog has to have a capital B. I could pay something forward by sharing the little things I do. And sometimes someone will google them and it will help him. Cool!

He also sent me this post which I really liked. Well, he forgot to mention "I have no time", but apart from that it's spot on. Time still is a real limitation. Working at a startup and having two (cute as hell) little kids at home doesn't leave a lot of spare time. So blogging will have to compete for the time slot before I go to sleep (hence the blog's name). But that's easy - if I have time and something to say, I'll write. If not, I don't have to.

The last reason to write is because I don't feel comfortable with it. Being a perfectionist I'm worried that I might say something silly, or trivial, or maybe just that no one will care.
All these things will probably happen, but as a father I keep trying to teach my kids that making mistakes is ok. If you're not making mistakes you're obviously not trying things that are hard for you, so you're not learning as quickly as you could. Damn those Genes! the least I can do is set an example by getting better at making mistakes :-)

So now we're done with static friction and this meta-post, I'll try and write a short programming one soon.