We had a two-week break at RC after my last post. I started working through Eloquent JavaScript over the break. Since returning, a handful of things have discouraged me from writing more blog posts.

• I was urgently aware of only having 6 weeks left in my RC batch
• JavaScript was confusing, and I didn’t feel comfortable writing about it
• I’m preparing for the interview process: learning algorithms, tidying up my Github, editing my CV, and more…
• I’m not 100% happy with how this blog has been so far

I’d like to say a few things on the past point so that you know what my goals are for this blog.

Goal 1

I very much want to maintain an educational blog. I love education, I love helping others, and I love learning. I’ve said this before, but it’s worth emphasizing:

• Writing about things I’m learning helps me and forces me to learn things much more thoroughly, which is to say that it helps me discover questions that I didn’t know to ask.

So far though, I’m not convinced it’s actually been very educational.

Goal 2

Another aim of the blog, which has gotten mixed in with the idea of being educational, has been to offer a clean, clear platform for answering questions that everyone has learning a given language.

Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow is awesome, but it’s not reliably clean and clear. Answers to question are all over the board. Sometimes the answer is far too technical, and assumes too much prior knowledge. Sometimes it’s simply too vebose.

The nature of its design is a bit muddy anyway. A blog post has the advantage of being able to be clean and nicely spaced (because it has the disadvantage of only offering a single point of view.)

The Internet

The other thing that bugs me when I’m looking online for a “How to”, is that a lot of people think that it’s necessary and acceptable to answer my asking “How do I remove my iPhone cover?” by starting off with a paragraph about who they are, and why they are qualified to tell me about using a screw driver.

Then there are two paragraphs of introduction to what an iPhone is, and another two paragraphs on the “History of the iPhone”. And then finally they show me where the two screws are, and how to slide the cover off.

YouTube’s “how to”s are just as bad. I’ve watched too many 5-minute videos hoping to catch a glimpse of the answer the title promises to provide.

You know what I’m talking about, right? I can’t be the only one annoyed by this.

Conclusion

When you’ve got a question about code, I want to show you code. I want to respect your time, and thank you for giving me a bit a little bit of your time.

I say that, and here I am expecting you to read, at this point 37 lines, of me not having said a whole lot.

The point is, I want to do better. So far in the blog I’ve addressed my second goal a little, but I’m not happy with how I’ve done with my first goal. I’ve showed you some tricks, but I haven’t helped make you a better programmer.

I don’t like that. The blog feels stale. And more important, unhelpful.

I’ve got just over two weeks left at RC, and all that I can afford to focus on right now is finding a job. Once I start getting a pay check, though, I’ll return to this.

Thank you again for your time. You’re awesome for having read these 61 lines.

I’ll talk to you soon,

Reed