The Quixotic Engineer

I have a friend named Sven in Software Engineering with me at Concordia. While we’ve often collaborated well together on projects, our styles of programming couldn’t be more different.

Sven likes to research and prepare. He reads the class textbook religiously and writes out his algorithms extensively beforehand. When he gets down to the nitty gritty of writing code, he’s already almost done.

I, on the other hand, throw myself into programming projects headfirst. I implement new concepts on the fly and learn by doing. I’ve described it as “gonzo coding” to some people, though if I really wanted to be true to Mr. Thompson’s legacy I’d avoid editing too. In practice the opposite is true, with large segments of code needing to be tweaked to fit my mercurial plans and abstract visions.

When planning this blog, however, I took a page from the book of Sven and read lots of advice for new bloggers. Some of it was technical and mostly involved toying with the html of the Blogger template. Some suggestions dealt with the page’s aesthetics, while others referred to accessibility and writing style.

What really struck me was the advice to avoid new blogger burnout. I recognized immediately what they were talking about: I may have a dozen good ideas for new posts right now, but if I update too frequently I may find myself at a loss for fresh ideas in a matter of weeks.

To avoid this predicament, the general consensus was that it is essential to create an update schedule and be consistent. In theory, not only will this set a manageable pace for blogging but also let readers know when they can expect new content.

Therefore, I’m letting you, my handful of readers, know that I plan to publish a new post every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.