noted on Thu, 05 May 2005
One year?? Already???
That Nerad... holding me accountable for not writing! That does it! I’m just going to have to bring you up to speed on my doings.
One year?? Boy the time went fast. Before I tell you what happened, let me first apologize for not writing. Will I write more often? Probably. But it might not be here. So let me explain.
I thought I wrote about this, but I can’t find it anywhere. Strange. Let’s see. Almost a year ago, I lost my job working for an incredible communications company. I chose to view this as an opportunity to start up my own business building web applications and HTML templates. It’s been a very good year so far, but the hours are very, very long.
Along the way, I learned about Ruby on Rails, then learned it. I’ve recently finished my first Rails-based website, and as of this time, it hasn’t yet launched, but it will soon. While I haven’t (yet) seen the wild productivity enhancements other people claim (like 10x shorter development time), it is fast, and I can already see that I’m doing the work of 3 people. The biggest hurdle for me was the ramp-up time. I didn’t get the right ah-hah moment when building with this until about 1/2 way through my client’s web site, at which point things clicked, and I was whipping through the features at an incredible rate.
The biggest problem with this project is the documentation — there’s too much of it, and it’s written for people who already know what they need to look for. This situation is gradually changing, and it seems that the easiest way to ramp up on Rails is to do 2-3 tutorials that are offered.
So, on the horizon, there’s a Rails day contest coming up, and I’m looking to enter it. There seems to be lots of prizes being offered, and that’s really cool. But I’m not in it for the prizes. I just want to have fun and see what kind of rabbit I can pull out of my hat. Maybe the idea I’ve got for my application would be different enough to attract notice. I sure hope so.
Now, I mentioned earlier that I might not write much more on this blog. Please emphasize the word might. I really don’t know what I want to do yet, but I was thinking that it would be nice to host my blog at roberthahn.ca. Yes, that’s my business site. That will mean that I’ll have to think carefully about what I write. Maybe. Maybe I’ll just set up a blog.roberthahn.ca site and continue to write like I always have. Did I mention I don’t know what I want to do yet?
I do know one thing. Building a business is hard work, and does an excellent job of taking focus away from writing. I fully expect that over the next year, things will settle down a bit, and I can extend my focus back to writing. I just don’t know when.