I guess I've been blogging on https://blog.jgc.org/ for 19 years now. I don't know where the time went. I keep doing it because I have new stuff to write about (from time to time). I suppose I'll keep doing it until I don't (have new stuff to write about).
Why I still blog after 15 years
11–20 of 230 posts
Re: Why I still blog after 15 years
#12I miss myself and my urge to write when I was thrilled by the concept in 2002.
My original blog would be old enough to commit cr-- drive now.
Re: Why I still blog after 15 years
#13Nice presentation and nice recap! A couple of observations from the text that resonate with me: * "Blogging helps me become a better writer, which in turns helps me become a better developer." Yes. Writing is super-important as a developer, particularly in a corporate setting, because communicating ideas clearly is critical in convincing others and in showing your contributions. And to be a better writer, well, one h…
> Other platforms like Twitter have captured the space of short form writing Does this ever feel like a waste? Are there good thoughts, ideas, and quips you've written and shared, that were then essentially lost to time? Since those thoughts are not archived on your website, when (if ever) do you (or anyone else) ever get to see them again?
I remember talking with a dev and they had posted a tutorial or how to on a thing on twitter.
It was nearly impossible to find. Search didn't work. No good direct link or easy way to find it.
I ultimately spent 2 hours scrolling past (thanks infinite scroll nightmare) to several years ago to find it.
There was no good way to jump to a given year
Re: Why I still blog after 15 years
#14> The Game Engine Trap.
What is that? I have a few theories.
One is that the developer doesn't really want to ultimately write a game.
Creating the assets needed for a game, as an example, can be daunting. Implementing high scores, audio, saving game state.... There is a lot of work to create a game beyond the rendering part.
Or the developer is intimidated by the more qualitative nature of the "game part" of the game. The engine can be measured in FPS, etc. How do you measure how fun the game is?
A recent approach I took was to write the game "firstmost" — the game engine was a necessity to realizing that goal. FWIW, I used SDL to create a kind of sprite engine. The "engine" was bare-bones but allowed me to recreate a shareware game of mine for Steam.
After the project was done I began a second (sprite-based) game by first moving over the same game engine code. But this new project required I extend the engine (there were new "feature requirements" unique to this new game).
In this way the engine can evolve from project to project, but never becomes a means to no end.
(And if you do it right, you ought to be able to pull the engine back into the original project with a minimal of refactoring.)
Maybe I'm just suggesting something that everyone already knows.
Re: Why I still blog after 15 years
#15If your blog provider supports it, adding a “Open a Random Post” button on your blog makes the experience much more fulfilling in the long term, as you (and others) can revisit different posts from different eras. Websites don’t have physical form that readers can navigate, so we can take advantage of that by adding serendipity manually.
First time I heard someone asking for that. But I do indeed have that for my own blog and love it: https://www.splitbrain.org/
And if you're into random blog post, be sure to check out my project https://indieblog.page/
Re: Why I still blog after 15 years
#16> The Game Engine Trap. What is that? I have a few theories. One is that the developer doesn't really want to ultimately write a game. Creating the assets needed for a game, as an example, can be daunting. Implementing high scores, audio, saving game state.... There is a lot of work to create a game beyond the rendering part. Or the developer is intimidated by the more qualitative nature of the "game part" of the gam…
Isn't that a special case of the Inner-platform effect - writing an X is boring, so create a platform for creating X-like applications. Of course, this can be repeated ad nauseam - to the level of "general-purpose tool-building factory factory factory"...
Re: Why I still blog after 15 years
#17I really enjoyed that post graph of theirs. I've shied away from battling with plain CSS over the years. I think it's a good time to finally lean into this weakness of mine.
Re: Why I still blog after 15 years
#18> The Game Engine Trap. What is that? I have a few theories. One is that the developer doesn't really want to ultimately write a game. Creating the assets needed for a game, as an example, can be daunting. Implementing high scores, audio, saving game state.... There is a lot of work to create a game beyond the rendering part. Or the developer is intimidated by the more qualitative nature of the "game part" of the gam…
I have a different theory. Making your own engine is a way to turn the enthusiasm I have now into something productive now.
If I want to make a character jump in Unity I need to familiarize myself with Assets, GameObjects, Cameras (don't forget the CamRotate component!), C#, Rigidbody and Colliders. My hunger for programming has turned into homework. But if I make my own engine I have more control between where I am, where I wanted to go, and what do I need to do in order to get there.
It is also probably a waste of time as I'll solve over and over problems that the game engine has been refining for decades. But I definitely see the appeal.
Re: Why I still blog after 15 years
#19If your blog provider supports it, adding a “Open a Random Post” button on your blog makes the experience much more fulfilling in the long term, as you (and others) can revisit different posts from different eras. Websites don’t have physical form that readers can navigate, so we can take advantage of that by adding serendipity manually.
First time I heard someone asking for that. But I do indeed have that for my own blog and love it: https://www.splitbrain.org/ And if you're into random blog post, be sure to check out my project https://indieblog.page/
Thanks for making and sharing that project. A feature request, if I may: please consider adding support for https://www.jsonfeed.org/. Thank you.
Re: Why I still blog after 15 years
#20I just started blogging again regularly after 15 years of neglect. It feels like it's too late. While I do see traffic from Google, I often wonder if it's just not worth the effort. I will probably use it more like a journal, than any sort of commercial side hustle. I do enjoy writing with more of my personal style, knowing it will contrast against the AI drivel.