“Any jackass can knock down a barn, but it took a carpenter to build it.” — Sam Rayburn

I fell off the blogging horse a bit this fall. A multitude of reasons; busy at work, a weird new keyboard, an ailing uncle in the hospital, and my wife tore her ACL playing tennis thus my parenting duties skyrocketed as she recovers. Grey hairs added to my beard, my stress manifested.

Behind the scenes I had a slew of vociferous tech industry blog posts queued up, but luckily I feel like caught myself going down a bad path. I realized that wasn’t the kind of blogger I wanted to be. I realized that the people I admire most don’t only criticize technology they dislike. Rather, they amplify the things they enjoy. I want to be that type of person.

Those folks tend to avoid straw man/hypothetical arguments, provide more thoughtful and weighted opinions, share work and projects they’ve built, don’t pick fights, and don’t feel the need to chime in on every bit of drama. There’s a high signal-vs-noise. Realizing this spun me off on a bit of self-discovery thinking about the parts of development that I enjoy and I’ve been peeking at new technologies that I think might suit my ethos.

There’s room for criticism, I don’t want to dismiss that. I’ve seen good design criticism improve products manifold. I’m listening to Cathy O’Neil’s Weapons of Math Destruction book where she exposes the biases built into popular AI/ML algorithms that create more injustice and inequality. Critique is needed, in fact I’d go so far as to say the world and its systems desperately need good critique.

Those angry, wordy drafts I wrote may see the light of day but need editing with a clear heart. In the meanwhile, I’m going to try and share more about what I’ve read, learned, enjoyed, or made.