My Inspiration to Blog

I had been reading various software development blogs for some time (instead of paying stricter attention to my proper duties) when I came across Stevey's encouragement to start blogging. As I have opinions I would like to share with the world, I decided to curse his blog publisher with what pops out of my mind. Here is what is rattling around in there trying hard to get out, and I need to either release it here or curse my wife/coworkers/strangers on the bus with it.

Blub programmers have been given a bad name by the people I enjoy reading. Especially Raganwald. We blubs are the people who keep the bilges of massively bureaucratic ships pumped. Sure, we have flaws. We mostly maximize short-term benefit, and we are motivated primarily by the warm fuzzies we get from our clients and the potential to win the coveted "best cookie" award at the staff Christmas party. When faced with the challenge of optimizing depth-first tree traversal algorithms, our first impulse is to form a committee to discuss what the various institutional divisions would want out of a depth-first tree traversal algorithm. But if we actually had imaginations and vision, the massive institutional inertia would grind our bones into dust.

The anti-blubs argue that we should therefore quit and find jobs that encourage us to explore the full potential of informational technology. But the whole point is that we like what we do. We like it when a user gushes at us because we have added a "logoff" link to our web pages. We like our individual three-ring binders filled with impenetrable coding standards (last updated, 1988). We are business analysts who bring value through our deep understanding of existing processes, not technophiles excited about meta-programming constructs. And every second we spend thinking about how to do something technically sweet, we spend a second less considering our user's needs (as the user understands them).

So given the environment and our motivations, how can we be the best blub programmers? This is the topic I will begin to explore when the rattling in my skull gets too loud again.