Hello World

So I started my own blog. I'm not really new to writing, since I have been doing this for the last twenty-something years in the name of my employers. But after reading various books on personal knowledge management, I swallowed the pill. I have been cultivating my notes in Obsidian for two years, but up until now I bailed on the last important steps all those PKM gurus advertise:

Real thinking requires externalization.

So in an attempt to hold myself accountable, I intend to force myself to publish regularly here. According to the hypothesis, promising this to you will actually make me do it.

I started working on the first piece on GraphQL, a technology that I have been using and advocating for ten years now. I think I am quite knowledgeable in that space, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to say, and in my head the argumentation thread was smooth and sound.

Then I asked Claude to critique it. And it was savage. In an episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, Kent Beck called it a "genie", and this is the best metaphor I could imagine, because you really have to be careful what you wish for. It pointed out so many holes and logical discrepancies that were completely valid, that I had to step away from the project for two days. Yes, a random number generator has hurt my feelings.

But 30 years of video games instilled in me an urge to overcome this. I did not come up with this nerdy website design that resembles the terminal I work in every day for nothing. I will pick myself up, and I will rethink, restructure and fill up the plot holes, until the genie has no more valid complaints. I am fully aware that it will always have some, since it is prompted to. But extracting the valid ones is part of the process. And it helps in more ways than I expected.

What I'm trying to say is: I don't even care if you read my ramblings. You, dear reader, have been replaced by an artificial intelligence. But you are still invited to stay for the funzies.