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Why I still blog after 15 years

jonashietala.se

21–30 of 230 posts

Re: Why I still blog after 15 years

#21
I am trying to get myself into doing it regularly.

One of my main thoughts was documenting things I have found I had to do to with certain projects to get it the way I want, like homebrew packages I need to install and what to setup for if and when I wipe my computer and start fresh or get a new computer and want to set it up like I am used to.

I have had many times I forget little things I had to do and end up going through the whole spiel of getting it to work correctly.

Re: Why I still blog after 15 years

#22

> 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…

This is part of the reason I have so much fun with the Pico-8 and now the official successor program Picotron.... You need to code right away!

Re: Why I still blog after 15 years

#24
Coincidentally, I noticed my blog’s first post¹ is from September 24, 2009, so yesterday it became exactly 15 years old.

I have taken great care to preserve all of the posts on my personal website, but unfortunately I don’t write new posts very often lately. I wonder if that’ll change.

[1]: https://dmitri.shuralyov.com/blog/1

Re: Why I still blog after 15 years

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I created a issue at https://github.com/splitbrain/blogrng/issues/3 but until its implemented maybe use something like https://fetchrss.com/json

Re: Why I still blog after 15 years

#26
Absolutely loved this.

Things I love about your blog:

- The fact that every post has links to the sourcecode!

- Open source

- No ads, no trackers, no popups

- I can tell you use this all the time. So I know you strive to make your content as good as possible _for you_. Which is a strong signal that it will also be good _for me_.

- I love the timeline (but wish they were done in a way that reflects scale, see user test video for more)

Here's my user test: https://news.pub/?try=https://www.youtube.com/embed/UF7fjvE_...

Re: Why I still blog after 15 years

#27

> 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…

>What is that?

Your game needs sprites, so you could write code that loads the one graphics format you need at the 2 or 3 sizes you need. While doing that you decide it looks hacky so you add support for more formats, better scaling, ... suddenly you have gone from doing that one thing your game needs to something that supports everything every game on the planet might need but usually doesn't. By the time you have done that for every system in the game, you now have an "engine" but are burnt out on the project.

Re: Why I still blog after 15 years

#28
> I worry that if I add statistics to the blog it’ll change from an activity I perform for the activity’s sake, to an exercise in hunting clicks where I write for others instead of for myself.

If I ever finally find the motivation to start a blog, I think this is a key point. Vanity metrics would be demotivating.

Re: Why I still blog after 15 years

#29
post #3

Nice 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?

Yes. That's why I have "microposts" on my blog's home-made SSG. I add an entry to a JSON5 file with the text, the RFC 3339 date, and a GUID (for permalinks) and it gets built into the site as a Tweet-like entry.

This reduces the friction in sharing things, since building a whole new page takes a few minutes.

Re: Why I still blog after 15 years

#30

> 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…

At this point I admit I've never even made a useful game engine.

I just make tech demos and libraries for odd stuff like loading 3D models

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