Rob Conery recently made a post (Be a Good Jedi: Build Your Own Blog « Rob Conery) about his continued dissatisfaction with his current blog engine of choice. This is not the first time that he’s posted about not liking things.. from Community Server, to ORM tools, etc. Yes, Rob can be opinionated and has no qualms about voicing his opinions out in the open.
Agree or disagree, you’ve got to respect him for at least that much.
However, on this topic, I’m not so sure. I use SubText as my engine of choice.. I have for years. Of course, there’s Jeff Atwood who’s totally in love with Movable Type. Don’t forget about Mads Kristensen and his wildly popular DotNetBlogEngine.
And then there’s hosted blog engine platforms like TypePad, Blogger and LiveJournal.
What I really don’t understand.. what feature is it that Rob is after that he can’t possibly find from the plethora of results found from a quick minute search on Google for “Blog Engine Software”?
He goes on to give some reasons why he thinks it’s a good idea:
- It’s the perfect app for a geek who wants a blog to build – they’re the perfect domain experts
- It’s easy (for the most part) but gets harder and harder the farther in your dive
- It’s ubiquitous. What a perfect interview topic: “I’d love to see how you handled asynchronous pings to Technorati and – oh – do you have a POP feature? Also – did you use MetaWeblog or Wordpress?”
- It’s your calling card. If your blog rocks – likely you do too. If it sucks and it’s slow – well…
- It’s a great way to learn a language. Want to try out ASP.NET MVC? Compare the LOC and features to your Webforms blog – then try Rails…
- Luke did it – and that’s good enough for me
However, he doesn’t say why he thinks the other engine software is not up to his standards or what features he’s missing. That being the case, I just took it as a half baked vent and the start of another project that won’t make it past beta release.
But then he “gone and done did it”!
I’ll keep it on GitHub if you want to see it but I challenge you to do the same. Why not? It’s a great bit of sidework and who knows what could come of it…
The gauntlet has been thrown down! He might as well said “I double dog dare ya!”
That also got me thinking about a reoccurring theme that Jeff Atwood has been blogging about and building your own personal brand.
I realize that 95% of the code that I write (and I write ALOT of code) is never seen by anyone other than the handful of developers that I hand picked to be on my team. I don’t have a true branding strategy, public persona, accepted presence or source of reference that potential employers can seek out. In this day and economy, there seems to be a need to some how, some way set yourself “above the pack”. I’ve not done a good job there.
Yea, I’ve got my blog. I don’t update it nearly enough.
Yea, I’ve got an article on CodeProject. I really should create more.
Yea, I’ve got some reputation points on StackOverflow. I need to be more active.
All in all, when it comes to building my “personal brand”. I fail. Perhaps, creating Yet Another Blog Engine would be a vehicle to act as the catalyst in jump starting my ambition to brand. Maybe I’ll even get so far as to develop something past beta release.
So Mr. Conery, I accept your challenge! I shall build the better mousetrap blog engine that you so desire! I shall be chocked full of awesomeness, the stars shall align, angels will sing and global peace shall spring forth!
If only I could come up with a name….