It's a strange moment to start a blog.
I've been putting this off for years. Always had excuses—too busy shipping, too deep in the work, who has time to write? Then I watched AI generate a complete post in seconds. Outline, paragraphs, headlines, the whole thing. It even mimicked styles it had seen before.
And I thought: okay, so what's the point now?
The point is the thinking
For years, I've admired people who keep writing. Not for the audience, not for the brand—just because they treat it as a craft. They show up. They make their thinking concrete. They leave a trail they can return to later.
I always wanted that trail. I just never started.
Now feels different. Not because AI makes writing easier, but because it makes the reason for writing clearer. When text is cheap, the point isn't producing words. It's producing evidence that someone actually thought about something.
What AI can't do
I'll use AI as a tool. Same way I use linters, debuggers, search. It helps me write faster, catch things I missed, explore angles I wouldn't have found alone.
But there's one thing it can't do: it can't be me.
It can't accumulate my exact set of experiences. The weird bugs I've chased at 2am. The production incidents that taught me what "reliability" actually means. The constraints I've learned to respect—usually the hard way. The taste I've developed for what "good" feels like, built up over years of seeing what works and what falls apart.
It doesn't know what I obsess over. It doesn't know how my thinking has changed. It can generate text that sounds like me, but it doesn't have the scar tissue.
A long-running blog isn't just content. It's a signature.
A place things don't disappear
I want somewhere my work doesn't evaporate after a sprint. Somewhere my research doesn't rot in bookmarks I'll never open again.
A place where notes from papers turn into mental models. Where hard-won lessons don't have to be re-learned every six months. Where I can revisit an idea I had two years ago and see if I still believe it.
And sometimes, just life as a software engineer. The craft. The trade-offs. The weird reality behind the clean abstractions.
The bar I'm setting
This won't be a hot takes blog. I'm not chasing the feed.
Each post should have at least one of these:
- A clear mental model
- A concrete example
- A lesson I learned the hard way
- A question worth refining over time
If it can't clear that bar, it stays a note.
What's actually scarce
When anyone can generate paragraphs on demand, the scarce thing isn't words.
It's a real perspective. Shaped by time. With taste, constraints, and skin in the game.
A thread you can follow across years and recognize as one person getting more precise.
That's what I want this to be. A record. Artifacts I can return to—especially when I've forgotten what I once knew.
So this is me starting. Finally.
If you're reading this: welcome. I'm glad you're here.