Hello, world!

Like many software engineers, my personal site has wallowed in a perpetual "in development" status for years and years.

It's not from lack of effort — on the contrary, I've started down this road so many times now I've completely lost count! Some of those attempts were short-lived, springing up over a long weekend as an excuse to play with some new tech stack, framework, or webhost. Other attempts were longer-lived, spanning many months and hours of meticulous planning and coding.

None of those projects ever saw the light of day.

YASEB (or, Yet Another Software Engineering Blog)

A few months ago, I decided that at the very least, I need to launch my personal site by 2021. No exceptions. I'm not a big New Year resolutions guy, so this is about the closest I get to having one. Sometimes, giving yourself a deadline (even an entirely arbitrary one) can help light a fire under you. At least that is what I'm banking on. 🤞

So, why yet another software engineering blog?

But why is this so hard?

I'm not exactly sure why it has taken me so long to get some sort of online presence. For someone who literally makes websites for a living, you'd figure that is easy-peasy, no?

Imposter Syndrome

I think part of it is good old fashioned imposter syndrome. Even though I'm a senior engineer, have built apps used by millions of monthly users and have worked in tech for the better part of a decade, I still often feel as if I know nothing. Like I'm one day away being discovered for — gasp — not actually knowing everything single thing about software. What even is the point if I can't even can't inverse a binary tree? I might as well hang up my hat, right?

Obviously, all of that is gatekeeping nonsense. Publishing this blog is in part to help me to get over that feeling.

Perfectionism

Seemingly at odds with Imposter Syndrome is being a perfectionist. At work, I often struggle with letting a project go in a state that I don't feel satisfied with - but at least in that context, you have hard business deadlines. Personal projects, not so much. I've continuously started and stopped my personal site so many times, I've lost track.

To counter this, I'm forcing myself to publish my site, warts and all. It is not perfect, nor will it ever be. It will always be a work in progress.