Me thinks you doth protest too much. I don’t think you should need to defend your blog in over 1,000 words. Either do it or don’t, and if people like it, don’t worry about it, and if people don’t like it, keep your day job.
But if we’re on the subject of unsolicited advice, why do you bold random sentences? One would think that each time you bold a sentence you’re going to want us to find that to be the take-away point or a very witty line, but half the time it seems like you’ve just bolded the topic sentence of the paragraph. Ease up on the bolding, it looks silly, and each time you do it I imagine you making a very silly-serious face even though half the time you’re not saying anything that really needs to be bold. There’s no reason that “becoming a professional software developer” should be bold in the above post; the others are probably fine though unnecessary. Excessive bolding makes it look like you’re taking part of a bad parody of business culture.
i read your blog and the daily wtf and get very different benefits from reading both. in fact, according to the ‘trends’ link in google reader, i’m reading 97% of your posts and only 23% of the daily wtf posts. i find that you post at a reasonable frequency, with articles sized right for a short break from coding and about issues i find interesting. the daily wtf is great too, but there are way too many articles coming off that site lately and it’s a bit overwhelming to try to read it all.
keep up the good work!
And, I thank you for sharing. I discovered your blog not long ago, but it has been very satisfying to read over you new and old posts.
I remembered when I first read Code Complete. It was given to me by an old boss on my first week on that job. At the time, I also thought I knew what I was doing, and the book made me realize what developing software is all about.
This was long time ago, and I haven’t read it since then, but I should go back and revisit it. A reallity check comes handy once in a while.
No “limb-gnawing tedium” for me. I love your blog.
Likewise, I love “Code Complete.” I had already been programming 20 years when I discovered it, took it home, and quickly realized it was the best programming book, by far, I’d ever seen. Ever since, I’ve been recommending that magnificent classic to anyone that will listen.
I’m way too busy to spend any time on web resources that aren’t the richest, densest, “most bang for the buck” available. That’s why I check your blog regularly; I’m constantly learning new things.
Your blog perfectly captures the “Code Complete” way of thinking. No need to get defensive over uncomprehending infants that think otherwise.
I enjoy my shitty coding. It reminds me that I’m still human.
And while we’re on the subject of shitty coding, can someone please explain to me why the second line compiles fine, but the third line gives me a “cast from pointer to integer of different size” error:
It does often seem that all people want are easy pre-chewed answers. They’d rather see a how-to or list of stuff for programming then actually read something that is thought-provoking. With Coding Horrors you are clearly one of those blog authors who is working hard to elevate the discussion beyond just syntax and semantics. And your doing it well. Software development is so crude right now that we have a virtually unlimited sphere of interesting things to explore and write about. The reference stuff is ok, but it is not helping us make improvements on our work; it is just helping us to get it done a little faster (or possibly just providing a good excuse to keep a web connection and do some surfing while at work
i wouldn’t let this get to you. aside from thousands of articles of ron paul, reddit has contributed little to the global collective intelligence. continue doing what you do!
even in the general sense, this is easily one of the best blogs online. i’m surprised at the rate and depth at which you update. really takes something to be a full time programmer yet accumulate the knowledge and thinking that goes behind writing the around the topics you write here, it’s really impressive. keep up the great work jeff!
When I started reading codinghorror I gave up on dailywtf. I realized that consuming other people’s misery did not make me a better developer. Codinghorror makes me a better developer
I’m generally a silent reader, but I thought it’s THE post to comment on and say:
Don’t make even the slightest change in the way you write, and in topics you choose. It’s already perfect man
The passage of time has made me realize everything I wrote some years ago is utter crap. The fact that it keeps working in spite of the glaring absence of style, documentation and logic is amazing. In just one program I wrote for my for personal use, there’s a table that will never, ever, exceed 200 TV channels and a Y3K bug. If daylight saving time ever starts on the fifth Sunday of February (2036) bad things happen at 2:00 AM. There’s a routine I won’t touch because I forgot how it works or why it’s there. Yikes!
The only consolation is I write better crap today than I did then.
Just wanted to toss in my 2c that I love your blog for what it is, and I love your explanation today for the name of your book. Half the time I want to cry out “Who wrote this $h!t, I’m held back by the possibility that I did it…”
Additional note on why that probably showed up on programming.reddit.com: Your posts are widely read by people there, and most likely they’re subscribed to you in their feedreaders. Each time you put out a new post, it gets submitted and shoots to the front page of prog.reddit.com, which is far from a bad thing. But I think these people get tired of seeing you there, because they want to see something they haven’t read yet (already having read your latest post in their feedreader) and reddit is supposed to bring them interesting stuff from all over, not just one site they already knew about and read. The CS-students who are bored by descriptions of clients and deadlines is probably accurate, too.
Yet another teeny tiny tear of joy trickes down my cheek as I read your remarkable blog and wonder how on earth we do it. Yes, that is it exactly, and yet again, we do write some remarkably good code on occasion, some stuff that has elegance, drive, and just the right set of core understanding of the problem to make it last for years and years. But the difference between greatness and mediocrity is impossible to predict. Just as in blogging, you don’t know how it will turn out until it is out of your own hands, and in the hands of your audience. You work just as hard at the stuff nobody pays attention to. You work just as hard at the stuff that seems to reek to high heaven only moments after it is gone to the wilds of public consumption.
What bugs me though, is the number of times I read others whine and complain about some post or other, only to find them weeks or months later spouting the very prose they claimed was so lame. I think if Jeff’s success is measured in INFLUENCE rather than the number of people who lay lovin on him, then we can all see that his blog is a certified hit. I even hear the odd ‘unreachable’ coder getting it from time to time.
So keep pluggin, and let the punters have their day. You can’t be successful without throwing it out there to be consumed. And you can’t be briliant at every turn, but neither can the whiners who want to be fed brain candy at every turn. Let them eat cake once in a while.
