I'm back!

After reading Jeff Atwood, on the occasion of his blog’s ten years, I was left mulling over the last year of La Naturaleza del Software.

Turning eight was an important milestone, one that even got me to compile and publish a book. But apart from that, the truth is that the last year was pretty “lazy” by this blog’s standards.

That worried me, of course, but it was this reflection of Atwood’s that shook me:

I used to tell people who asked me for advice about blogging that if they couldn’t think about one interesting thing to write about every week, they weren’t trying hard enough. The world is full of so many amazing things and incredible people. As Albert Einstein once said, there are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

I wasn’t trying hard enough. I had forgotten. I can’t fully process all the things that are happening to me until I write about them. I have to be able to tell the story to understand it myself. My happiness only becomes real when I share it with all of you.

And I feel that’s what was happening with this blog.

Without being the main cause, one of the barriers keeping me from writing was the platform I decided to use last year. Octopress is cool, it’s hipster. A tool designed by programmers for programmers. But that’s also the problem. It’s the same thing that happens with LaTeX, for example.

They are wonderful tools, but they force you into a workflow that doesn’t fit the kind of writing I try to do on this blog.

If you are a programmer who is going to write a couple of posts a month at most, then use Octopress. But let me remind you that this blog once ran at four posts a week.

I also like to write long posts, which need a lot of revision. Using Octopress reminded me of the days when I had to compile tens of thousands of lines of C code, in the late ’90s. Compiling could take up to thirty minutes. Or when I had to write in LaTeX at the university, iterating between Vi and Xdvi.

When I started working I resisted using Word, in favor of LaTeX. But the truth is I had to admit that LaTeX only got in the way of my work and had me wasting time on things that weren’t the important ones.

WYSIWYG was invented for a reason. Ignoring that for the sake of a certain intellectual purity (or arrogance), or in order to achieve exquisite typography, kept me from focusing on what matters, which is the business.

Octopress was a barrier to my business.

So, if not Octopress, then what?

Absolutely not Wordpress, of course. The main requirement was to have a web interface for editing, one that lets me jot things down from anywhere, just as I used to.

I had heard about Ghost; it was the fact that Atwood decided to move to this new platform that pushed me to switch. And the truth is I’ve been surprised.

Installing it was very simple. Migrating hasn’t been as complicated as I first suspected. The truth is that in two afternoons I was able to install, configure and migrate the whole blog.

There are still some details, but, since I’m impatient, I decided to go to production now!

After all, “worse is better”, and if I kept putting off the decision I would end up with two months without publishing a post, and I don’t want that, because it would mean I gave up.

Which brings me to the other reason, the emotional one.

Although publishing the book was gratifying, it was also a huge blow to my ego. I made the unforgivable mistake of not working with an editor, or at least someone to review my work, and the first edition came out with lots of errors.

In these months, preparing the print version and working with a reviewer, I learned that I really don’t write as well as I thought, as another of my blogging role models, Boolture, puts it.

His unsparing critique hit me hard and at first discouraged me. But I decided to get over it, and with humility accept and learn from my reviewer’s observations.

I’ve learned a lot about writing in these months, and even so there is much more to learn.

The most basic lesson is that the only way to get better at the art of writing is by writing. The second is that revising is very important, and that’s something I didn’t spend much time on. With Octopress, revision gets slower too, so that’s another point against it.

But don’t worry, I’ve gotten past the emotional barriers that had me blocked. I’m back, and better, I hope.

This post is a milestone that marks the start of a new era for La Naturaleza del Software. The beginning of another eight years (to keep the figure a power of 2), which I hope will be as interesting as the first.