Here I am, having set up a web server to serve this page, and a Forgejo repository with CI/CD to build and publish the content. On average I write less than 1.5 posts per year.

So why am I writing these texts?

It’s not like I promote these texts in any way, I don’t push them on LinkedIn nor do I compile them in some newsletter. I also don’t solicit any feedback/discussion on them, I simply write them and publish them into the void.

These texts are just a way to give shape to some kind of creative urge that has grown within me over the last few years. Hopefully someone finds something useful in here - but at the end of the day it really doesn’t matter. My thinking about, and writing them, means they’ve already fulfilled their primary purpose: to allow me some outlet of minor creativity without external influence/dependency.

The Cliché of Developer Blogs

There’s a trope/stereotype on a software developer setting up a blog, spending most of the time on the technical bits behind the blog, and then essentially writing nothing. I’m skirting this trope closely, but trying to keep just above the line of not just becoming another empty developer blog. One thing I think is sorely needed on the Internet today, is decentralized content of any kind. It’s so much more common now to publish texts on existing services, rather than serving them by yourself or on smaller platforms.

On one hand, I fully understand this - if you want to write texts and have people read them / interact with you around them, it’s much more efficient to rely on an existing service with active users.

But on the other hand, the ongoing centralization of content on the Internet, together with the looming “AI” (LLM) future which seems to creep ever closer, I feel that we all would benefit from more content being self-hosted or at least be less dependent on these pre-existing behemoth services.

Don’t be a slave to The Algorithm, put your mediocre content on your own little corner of the Internet ✊