Welcome!

Welcome to my little corner of the internet that I've been building for myself. 👋

I've been a software developer for a bit of time now, and I figured it was time to start sharing some of the things I've learned and built. I'll be using this space to record my thoughts, share my projects, and improve my technical writing by putting pen to paper (or more fittingly, fingers to keyboard).

If you'd like to learn a little bit more about me, head on over to the about page.

Why Maintain a Developer Blog?

I've been inspired by many software developers who have shared their knowledge and experiences through their writing (especially folks like Jon Skeet and Andrew Lock).

I've learned a lot from them, and I hope to give back to the community by sharing my own experiences. Maintaining a developer blog is also a great way to document what I'm learning and keep track of my progress over time. I fully expect to refer back to old posts and laugh at my past self, and I hope that others can learn from both my mistakes and successes.

Why Build it from Scratch?

First off, you probably shouldn't.

There are many great, free platforms out there that make it easy to get started with a blog. Medium, Wix, and WordPress are just a few examples. If you want to save time and effort, I'd recommend using one of those to get started quickly.

I decided to build this site from scratch for a few reasons:

1. Learning: I wanted to build something that forced me to learn all corners of the stack. This site is built with a myriad of tech, including .NET, Blazor WebAssembly, gRPC, JS, HTML, CSS, Docker, and more. It's hosted in GCP on a tiny Kubernetes cluster and deployed via GitHub Actions.
2. Flexibility: I wanted to have full control over the design and functionality of the site, and be able to easily add new features and customize things without being locked into a specific platform.
3. Performance: I enjoy being able to optimize and tune things for performance. I’m also intrigued about WebAssembly and its potential for building fast, responsive web apps as it matures and becomes more widely adopted.
4. Fun: I enjoy building things. Software development is a creative outlet for me, similar to music, and I enjoy seeing the stuff I build come to life.
5. Experimentation: Having a little app deployed in the cloud gives me a playground to experiment with new tech and ideas on my own time. For example, I plan on experimenting and pushing the boundaries of what's possible with WebAssembly for compute-intensive workloads on this site sometime in the future.

There are probably more, but you get the idea.

What's Next?

I've got a bunch of ideas for upcoming posts that I'm excited to dig into. Some will cover general software development best practices, others might dip into more philosophical ideas, while others will get into the nitty gritty details of specific tech, so stay tuned for more!