When was the last time you updated your blog?
Have you done anything lately that was worth blogging about?
These are all questions that have been rattling around my head recently. I’ve experienced it myself, I’ve seen it via my colleagues. When people are working on interesting stuff, focused on solving clearly defined business goals, their blogs are full of detail and insightful to read! If the business is losing or has lost direction, blogs become an attempt to stay focused and continue honing skills but slowly over time the drain of the working day drags the blog content down to just notes or, worse still, silence.
I’m beginning to see the worth of a blog as a litmus test on job satisfaction – a stagnating or random blog probably indicates a day job that is doing something similar! Many posts (regardless of the stats) probably indicates a full-on and enjoyable day job focused on solving tangible business goals
There is probably a good argument that a job shouldn’t define you and that you can exist out of work, but if you are a developer and you’re spending at least 8 hours per day, 5 days a week doing something that is not progressing your skills and you’re not enjoying, then you probably need to question what you are doing! (and the first person that you should question is your boss!)
I’ve been hosting my blog on Blogger for the past 10 years. For the past couple of years, I’ve been looking at rebooting my blog, trying to decide whether to stick with Blogger, write my own blog platform (like all developers at some point) or move onto WordPress. I’ve never needed to set up a WordPress site previously, so this seemed to be the perfect chance to learn something new! So, my new blog will . . .
I’ve picked up my own .dev domain and have set up a very basic website at paulhadfield.dev. The site is hosted in Azure and I’ve set up continuous integration/deployment up in DevOps pipelines. As well as scratching that itch of creating my own website, something I’ve been talking about for a while, it will allow me to learn more about various Azure technologies. This is part of my plan to look into becoming a certified . . .