Uncategorized August 10, 2009

Be a Good Jedi: Build Your Own Blog

Every developer has a blog, and every developer bitches about it – mostly because (and this is my theory) they always think they can do better themselves. The only people who don’t bitch about their blogs are the guys who are building the engines (they just bitch about each other’s :).

Every developer has a blog, and every developer bitches about it – mostly because (and this is my theory) they always think they can do better themselves. The only people who don’t bitch about their blogs are the guys who are building the engines (they just bitch about each other’s :) .Rather than complain about what others aren’t doing for me :) I decided I should get constructive/proactive:CaptureYah! I did a File|New, came up with a name, got really excited and then…

Meh.

As the cascades of “Yah just another blog engine” started coming in – it hit me:Capture2I’m actually serious. Why not? Here’s why I think it’s a good idea:

  1. It’s the perfect app for a geek who wants a blog to build – they’re the perfect domain experts
  2. It’s easy (for the most part) but gets harder and harder the farther in your dive
  3. It’s ubiquitous. What a perfect interview topic: “I’d love to see how you handled asynchronous pings to Technorati and – oh – do you have a POP feature? Also – did you use MetaWeblog or WordPress?”
  4. It’s your calling card. If your blog rocks – likely you do too. If it sucks and it’s slow – well…
  5. It’s a great way to learn a language. Want to try out ASP.NET MVC? Compare the LOC and features to your Webforms blog – then try Rails…
  6. Luke did it – and that’s good enough for me

I’m Doing ItI’m going to build my own engine – but it will be my little lightsaber. I’ll keep it on GitHub if you want to see it but I challenge you to do the same. Why not? It’s a great bit of sidework and who knows what could come of it…