Blog End

When I started this blog, my short-term goal was to have a place to think out loud about the uncertainty I felt as an author of technical material in a publishing world that was on the brink of making the transition from black-ink-on-white-paper to whatever comes next. I can't say I'm now feeling a lot less uncertain, and in fact the pace of change in the publishing world has only accelerated, as electronic publication assumes increasing importance, but I no longer feel as angsty about it.  This counts as progress.

My longer-term goal was to engage in a dialogue with people interested in the production of fast software systems such that I could do a better job with the content of Fastware!.  Doing that, however, requires that I write up reasonable initial blog posts to spur discussion, and I've found that this is not something I enjoy.  To be honest, I view it as overhead.  Given a choice between doing background research to learn more about a topic (typically reading something, but possibly also viewing a technical presentation, listening to a technical podcast, or exchanging email with a technical expert) or writing up a blog entry to open discussion, I find myself almost invariably doing the research. One reason for this is that I feel obliged to have done some research before I post, anyway, and I typically find that once I'm done with the research, writing something up as a standalone blog entry is an enterprise that consumes more time than I'm willing to give it.  It's typically easier to write the result up in the form of a technical presentation, then give the presentation and get feedback that way.  This, for example, is what I did with my work on CPU caches. 

My work on Fastware! will continue, but I don't expect to make any more blog entries about it here.  Instead, I'll fall back on my usual policy of not making an announcement about anything until whatever it is I have to announce is fairly well-baked.  If you're interested in announcements of those type, I suggest you follow my "Professional Announcments" blog.

Scott