December 13, 2022

Hello, World!

Never had any idea what to write in the first blog post. Usually, there are some words about the excitement of starting a blog, or some welcome message. So why did I start this blog? I don't know. Am I excited? Not really. In fact, it's a third or even fourth attempt to start a blog. I guess I just want to offload some stuff from my head. Maybe also make a habit of writing thoughts down. For sure, to learn how to write in English (not my native language). I hope to figure out the answer quite soon.

Anyway, here's yet another technical blog about programming! Not really an achievement, especially in 2022, where we have neural networks generating such blogs without any sweat.

I remember I wrote my first program when I was still attending secondary school. I think it was in 2001. Dotcom bubble just happened, Perl and HTML were the hottest things, although I didn't know about anything like that. I've heard about the Internet, but haven't had any access to it till the next year or something. Anyway, I wrote my first program using Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0.

Was it exciting? Hell yeah, it was. I instantly realized that's what I want to do my entire life. That time I didn't need fame or money, just give me a computer with a proper IDE and leave me alone. Who would've told me that programming is actually a tedious, soul-sucking endeavor that will only lead to disappointment and frustration in the long run. Especially if you decide to follow that foolish advice:

But before all the above happened, it was nice and exciting. After Visual Basic I've switched to C++, doing stuff like Windows applications with MFC and OpenGL.

Then briefly, some web development (huge mistake, LOL) using PHP and the LAMP stack. Then back to low-level stuff, embedded development in C on tiny microcontrollers (indeed, MCUs were called ATTiny, no pun intended). Then I've got back to web development, Ruby on Rails (was nice) and after JavaScript with React.js (not so nice). Here I am.

The more I become old the more I miss the old times. It wasn't easy back then, programming was always a challenge. But it still feels like it was a different type of challenge. Like the challenge of inventing a new reality, not a challenge where you fight with the complexity of your tools. Jokes aside, they even created neural networks, because selecting a new JavaScript library for React.js state management is not an easy task anymore! I hope AI will be able to cope with that, as I haven't seen any progress in AI psychoanalysis lately.

Perhaps another frustrating aspect of doing software development is the fact that, at the end of the day, your work will have a little impact on the world. I mean in a good way. Yes, some people do that, but at this point it seems like a statistically insignificant outcome. Many times not planned at all.

What about me? I just wanted to make some video games (or to be precise to program some video games). And while I was trying this and that actual real game development never happened, unfortunately. However, I still feel like I need to resolve that itch somehow. And I guess (or I hope, let's be careful here 😅) this blog would be a journal of me closing those gestalts^[1]. We'll see.

☙