Hello again!

Many years ago I had this idea of a simple, personal set of notes about things. I wanted to use mainly lists, and refer to upstream documentation and articles and gotchas.

For example, vim has fantastic built-in documentation. It is however hard to navigate, and too big. What I wanted was a map to help me pick some things from the original docs and remember where to find the source.

This map, linking things that I know (or I would like to know) with good quality sources, is basically my own technical knowledge.

At the time, I was working on a single piece of software (Odoo, a very powerful open-source ERP). Even though projects were similar to each other, I tried to regularly learn something about a tool or system I was using and apply that to my daily work. I thought my lists could be a sort of flashcard to remember to apply things to my daily work.

I also discovered Gary Bernhardt and his screencasts Destroy All Software. Watching Gary dive into interesting topics and seeing him code was a great influence to me.

In the end, I abandoned my lists pretty quickly. Were them a failure?

Now that I look back at it, no.

Towards the end of my time in France, even though I was still working with Odoo, I had the opportunity to work on more diverse projects, including infrastructure.

Since I am at Spotify, my work has been much more diverse. I have been exposed to way more systems, colleagues and teams. I learnt more about the business as well. I learned from my colleagues through pairing, mobbing, code review and discussions over coffee. My learning has been broader, more intense, more personal, but less deep.

Still, personal deep dives, hacks, technical books are fantastic. What I would like is a way to piece it all together. In other words, I would like to have some form of deliverable after some time spent learning or hacking on something.

A blog could be such a thing.