I’ve always identified myself with programming. I wrote my first line of code around the age of 12, meaning I have been writing code for a quarter of a century.

For most of that time, sharing what I’ve learned—on this blog and elsewhere—has been my way of giving back to the generous community that taught me so much. While I hold a formal degree in Computer Science, I’ve never really considered myself a “classical” programmer. The theory I picked up in school was valuable, sure, but nearly everything I know about building real things with code came from enthusiasts on the Internet sharing their knowledge.

But 25 years is a long time, and change is inevitable. Both the world and I have evolved. After 25 years of confining myself solely to one stereotype, I do not feel a strong drive to develop myself in this direction anymore. Now, don’t get me wrong- engineering software is what I do for a living and I will likely keep doing some portion of it throughout the rest of my life. But programming for the sake of writing code is a dying art, and I began seeing the writing on the wall around 5 years ago.

It seems that the coding-for-coding-sake thing might not be as prominent in the future as it has been during the last three decades. But That’s OK for me. For one, I have never been against using advanced assistive tooling in programming. There are programmers who consider programming a form of sacred art that can only be performed by a human — to the point that they insist on typing every keystroke by hand, using a barebones text editor. You know the type of person. Maybe. I’m even referring to you. Please don’t get offended. I respect your preferences, but for me, writing code has always been a step in solidifying my ideas, not the end product in and of itself. In fact, I’m happy to use Augmented Intelligence (which is what I think AI should stand for/tooling in my work. It gets me to a tangible thing faster and with less bickering about ideological stuff. YMMV, but I’m quite OK with that.

Rediscovering Creativity #

And this is kind of the whole point of this post. By seeing myself less as someone who dabbles with code and more as someone who uses code to create things, I began opening up to all the other creative sides of me that I’ve been putting aside for far too long. Things like creative writing, drawing, photography, and making music. All of those deserve equal attention, and the more time I can free from meaningless flame wars over whose programming language is better, the more room I have for creative expression in any of those other directions.

Does this mean the end of my blog? Not at all, but I am provisioning some changes in the direction. While I will definitely keep sharing technical content, it won’t be the sole focus. Actually, it hasn’t been for at least a year now. My technical blog posts are far fewer and get mixed in with other topics I am interested in. I want to begin sharing my photographic explorations, too. And my creative writings. I am not entirely sure how to do this best. This is why I created a second site just for my non-technical, creative endeavors. It will also feature occasional newsletters, so feel free to subscribe if you like my writing. For the time being, all my posts will end up here, too, but depending on what readers expect from this site, the two might diverge in the future (like my multiple diverging sides).

If you feel the same way, please reach out to me by leaving a comment or sending me an email. I’d be happy to hear your thoughts on shaping the next chapter of this blog.

Until next time! ✌️