Why I don’t blog…
by Hal Reed
People sometimes ask me why I don’t blog.
The Short Version
I can’t produce ‘good content’.
The Long Version
Last weekend, a man named Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died. His death (by which I mean his life) has inspired me to explain, in proper context, why I don’t blog.
Aleksandr produced many works that are worth reading. Therefore, almost no one reads them. Things that are worth reading are always hard to read. They take time. Sometimes things are so hard to explain, they actually require a captive audience, such his commencement address to Harvard University in 1978:
“The limits of human rights and righteousness are determined by a system of laws; such limits are very broad. People in the West have acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting and manipulating law…. An oil company is legally blameless when it purchases an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make it last longer: after all, people are free not to buy it.”
That’s simply not the kind of ‘content’ that people are looking for in a blog. They didn’t like it much at Harvard either. Luckily, no one paid much attention to what he was saying. Besides, that was, what, 30 years ago? Blogs are about what’s new and hot and important *today*.
I suppose I could give some tech tips in a blog. Here’s the best tech tip I know: read No Silver Bullet by Frederick P. Brooks, 1987:
“[L]et us examine the difficulties of that technology. Following Aristotle, I divide them into essence, the difficulties inherent in the nature of software, and accidents, those difficulties that today attend its production but are not inherent.
The essence of a software entity is a construct of interlocking concepts: data sets, relationships among data items, algorithms, and invocations of functions. This essence is abstract in that such a conceptual construct is the same under many different representations. It is nonetheless highly precise and richly detailed.
I believe the hard part of building software to be the specification, design, and testing of this conceptual construct, not the labor of representing it and testing the fidelity of the representation.
We still make syntax errors, to be sure; but they are fuzz compared with the conceptual errors in most systems.
If this is true, building software will always be hard. There is inherently no silver bullet.”
Great stuff, right? You didn’t even follow the link, did you? Yeah, nothing kills a good tech blog like the application of Aristotelian Metaphysics to explore the concept that software may, in fact, be hard. Definitely not ‘good content’. Never going to get on the cover of Wired with an attitude like that Fred; here in the 21st century we like our tech reliable and affordable, like Vista and the iPhone.
You see my dilemma? The only stuff that I read is difficult, and kind of depressing, stuff that no one would ever want to read about in a blog. Who wants to read that kind of stuff on a computer anyway? I mean, you can’t even make notes in the margins. The message just doesn’t fit the medium.
Rest in peace Alek. I am wiser for having heard your testament; God bless you and keep you.
August 6th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Well, at least it’s a very true reflection how deep you really can be…
August 6th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
*sniff* What’s that I smell? The distinct scent of curmudgeonry?
Personally, I think the long version disproves the short version. Good post. There are more like-minded bloggers out there than you think.
August 7th, 2008 at 5:31 am
“Why I don’t reply to Blogs’
Basically, I couldn’t agree with you more, Hal.
Most things have been said before, usually by people who are more eloquent or persuasive than we.
As with any new technology…just because we can (blog), doesn’t mean we should.
and
as with any activity…just because lots of others do it, doesn’t mean we should too.
This concludes my first-ever blog post
August 7th, 2008 at 11:57 am
itguy couldn’t have said it better. (short and sweet, that’s my motto)
April 3rd, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Thanks, Hal.
You have reminded me what drew me into programming and software design in the first place.
August 15th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
well joel spolsky constantly refers to “no silver bullet” and still manages to maintain the most popular blog for programmers
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