Confessions of an opinionated software guy

Being a software engineer can be exceedingly frustrating. At least, I find it to be so.

Explaining my frustrations to others, however, can be impossibly frustrating. Whenever I attempt this, the conversation inevitably devolves into a long rant. My monologues jump hither and fro between diverse topics; I endlessly complain about all manner of things, from the lack of Cut-and-Paste functionality on my iPhone to the fundamentals underpinning modern western liberal democracy.

To top this all off, I am a firm believer in the tenet that complaining alone never gets you anywhere. If you don't have a goal and a plan of action then you should, to use one of my favourite online abbreviations, just STFU. And yet, among my rants and raves I occasionally have an idea that seems good, and occasionally plausible too. Granted, I'm usually drunk or otherwise over-excited by this time. Yet even in the cold light of morning I always have this niggling suspicion that I may have hit on a vein of usefulness back there, only to let it disappear into oblivion.

So, I'm self-absorbed and opinionated. Who ever needed another reason to start a blog?

I have a beef, a bone to pick. I live and breathe computers and computer networks, and I've made them my life's work, but there is much about the state of the industry that I deplore and wish was different. I also have some ideas, and maybe some of them might work. This blog is an attempt to set them down and put them in order, and to also put them out there for people to shoot down shamelessly, perhaps allowing me to figure out how many of them have any grounding in reality. I hope you enjoy it, and I encourage you to participate.

The second post to this blog will be an attempt at a manifesto; an explanation of the question I'm asking and the approach I'll be taking in order to find an answer.

It's a truism today, after all the hype has died down, that you blog primarily to stroke your own ego. Instead of fighting against this, I will embrace it, and I try to remember that despite the proclamations above, I am blogging because I have an ego and I like to write. If you're actually reading this, it honours me to no end. If you're enjoying it, it goes beyond my wildest expectations.

Thank you.

Next entry: It's the software, stupid