Why software?

If you've read my first post, you know you're in for some content about gemcutting, LEGO, and… software. Sounds sort of random, doesn't it? So I thought it might be helpful to explain the why behind these topics. So today, let's talk about why I'll be writing about software.

My writing and videos (on YouTube) will all be focused on learning. And that makes software stand out from the crowd a little, because well… I'm already a professional software engineer! 🧑‍💻 As of this writing, I'm a staff software engineer at GitHub, and I spend about 90% of my time working in Ruby.

But the thing is, software moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and learn once in a while, you could miss it!

There's always more to learn in software. The field evolves quickly and stagnation as an engineer is always a career risk. I've been working in software for over 20 years now, and I'm always learning new things. It's part of the job.

So my code-focused content might be an interesting mix of me sharing what I'm learning in real time as well as sharing a few things I've already learned throughout my career. I'm going to try to err on the side of you and me learning together. I'm much more interested in being a fellow student than being a teacher.

Also, I find that writing about code (which I used to do more often) has a way of crystalizing that knowledge in my own mind. So there's also certainly a self-serving aspect to it!

You may find more code content here on my blog than on my YouTube channel just because of the text nature of code and the usefulness of code snippets. But I'll definitely make video content focused on software, probably with a companion post here on the blog. I'd also love to live stream some of the open source work I do. I may also try to go live on non-open-source work, so long as there are no confidentiality or intellectual property issues.

So if you're interested in learning about some of the tools and tricks I've picked up along the way (and am still picking up), subscribe here and on YouTube for all sorts of code content. And while you're at it, the topic of software is so broad so I'd love if you'd leave me a comment letting me know what kinds of code content you'd like to see. Thank you!