Why I wrote my last blog post

A lot of people have been asking why I wrote my last blog post, or have been blogging in general.

Here's why:

1. I failed to adopt the pomodoro method about 2 years ago. If I blog about it, and highlight the important details, I feel like I am more likely to stick with it.
1. Consider the analogy of learning to program by typing out the code vs merely copying & pasting the code. If you type out the code, you learn it significantly better.
2. Consider the analogy of learning how to derive an equation vs merely knowing the equation. If you understand the theory behind something, you understand it better, and you value it more highly.
2. My family has told me that I should use a diary over the years. I've only used it occasionally. I am essentially using a private diary again, but some lessons I feel like I should share with others.
3. My family has tried to persuade me repeatedly over the years that playing video games is a waste of time. Although they are indeed a less productive use of my time than contributing to open source projects, they are extremely good ways of teaching people lessons about life.
1. Just as Star Trek is a "morality play set in the future", video games are often great ways of teaching people lessons too.
2. To a degree, it wasn't that I was playing video games that was a waste of time. It was that I was playing the wrong video games. I played "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time" in 2003-2004, and that game was all about rewinding time. But I recently played Assassin's Creed III. And the lesson from AC3 is that the past is read-only, the present is read-write, and you have to learn from the past to save the present/future.
4. I feel like my family/friends (fraternity brothers) will be very happy for me when they read my blog. Some fraternity brothers already have, and they have given me great feedback (although not in the form of comments on my blog.)
5. Yes, I do feel like I have lessons to share with open-source projects. But I have now learned that I need to persuade them with code rather than with words.
6. As Scott Adams (Dilibert author) wrote for his "Robots Reads News" comic strip:

Developing it is a system :-) I’m learning as I go.

-Mike

Update 2015-08-30: Added #6 (Robot Reads News) with quote