My software development writing days are not over

Like many software developers, I code, code a lot, and time and again, do not ship. Reasons are the usual ones: I get tired of the project; realise I’ll eventually not want to do marketing for it; work gets in the way; I lose trust that anyone will be interested in it; shiny object syndrome kicks in and I move to another project, etc.

On Morse Wall

For many of the reasons above, I’ve given up often on collecting my many years’ worth of software development writings in one place. Then, this summer and a rainy Sunday came along (actually, summer and rain got along very well this year 🙄 - laughs in British) and I’ve shipped Morse Wall (morsewall.com). A place made to be helpful for others creating software.

One of the projects I’ve written about was on rebuilding the same tiny project (a random quote machine) 11 different ways with 11 different front end stacks (moving from Vanilla JS into React and state management with Redux, etc.) and open-sourced the code. All because shipping a simple application in a simple environment with fewer moving parts is a great way to practice a new way to solve a problem. If you are interested in starting the series from the beginning, here you go.

KISS principle above all

It goes without saying, but here it comes anyway: Redoing an insanely simple project 11 times and writing about it is fun. And indeed a great way of honing skills (given the app is ultra simple and there aren’t that many moving pieces), specially writing skills. That said, in real life, one should use the right tool for the right job. There is no need for state management (with Redux) there, nor the need to reuse UI components (with React) in that app. Vanilla JS (covered in the first write up of the series) offers the beauty of simplicity with only 3 lines of functional JS.

People seem to be liking it

It makes me happy to share that some of the writings have reached the top of many software development subreddits a few times, readers are spending in average over 4 minutes on pages and page views are growing 400% week-over-week. Guess the writings are being useful to some people.

So, if you are curious about my software development writings and would like to make a writer very happy today, you should become a member of Morse Wall.

Leave a comment or come say hello on Twitter!

Shipped something (https://t.co/7xTNuJqmcy) I should have shipped years ago. Thanks to an archetypical British summer. pic.twitter.com/DIF5NTRKdE

— Pat Eskinasy 👩🏻‍💻🌳 (@celue) September 1, 2021