I started blogging back in 2002. At that time I was working at Lecando, where I was lucky enough to be doing Java development and experimenting with XP together with some ridiculously bright people like Jimmy, Johan, Jon, Håkan and Visar.
Back then, Java was where it was happening. All the new things happened in Javaland, and we did our best to try out the new things; TDD with JUnit, CI with CruiseControl.
I spent a lot of time then reading blogs. Most of the blogs I was interested in were hosted at FreeRoller, a platform run by Anthony Eden, today perhaps more famous for DNSimple.
All the cool kids blogged on FreeRoller. It featured a top list of the most read post at the moment, on which you most often found smart posts from Rikard Öberg or rants from Hani Suleiman. I once held the top place at that list, ahead of Rickard, for something like four hours. I was immensely proud.
If I remember it correctly, FreeRoller turned into JRoller, which apparently still exists today.
The thing was, we had actual blog debates back then. If you wanted to comment on a blog post, you wrote a blog post of your own, linking to the original post. I know, sounds crazy. But I remember it as a slower, more thoughtful way of debating and writing. Like many others, my blogging has halted considerably as I started using Twitter and Facebook. And while being limited to 140 characters forces you to condense your thinking, it is not the best way to find the nuances of a topic. Writing a long piece is like preparing a presentation, you - hopefully - think things through, and get a better, more detailed view of the topic at hand.
I’ve come to realize that I miss writing as much as I did back then. Also, I’ve found that the less frequent I write, the more I feel that a new post has to be really good. Writing more often takes that away. In that regard, this post is one attempt to break that barrier. Hopefully, it will help.