Floating Point

Why?

It’s a new year. Time for new beginnings.

Is that all there is to the change?

May be a bit more.

I have decided I can do better than writing my own blog engine. Tumblr does a lot more than my custom engine and they do an amazing job at it. So I will use them to host my blog.

I sense something more philosophical…

That might just be me speaking in the above quote, but if you really do care about what my response to that is, read on. Ramblings ahead, be warned.

I have always known reinventing the wheel is expensive and is usually not worth it. But the compulsive engineer in me has loved to stretch his intellectual muscles to re-solve problems just to see how he can do it. However this has been a big source of speed loss. And after I gained some insight into the design of that system and how much more work is involved in making it reach the level of existing products, it also leads to a lot of abandoned projects. This made me feel bad. It is a lot of work and a lot of wasted effort. Something needed to be done.

Software Development is magical and fulfilling to me because it is a creative process where we create something of value from almost nothing. The more value I create, the more fulfilled I am. The best way to create more value is to build amazing new things or to make an awesome thing even more awesome. The fastest way to build new things is to build it using existing pieces that work, rather than recreating every part of the system.

Either way, I have resolved to embrace and use existing solutions to build newer products rather than re-create parts. And if there a product that almost works, I would rather spend the time and make it work for me rather than rewrite it from scratch. This is my new resolve from this new year: improve my velocity to create more value so I can wake up everyday excited and enthusiastic about what is ahead.