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I'm going to write my own blog software

As the title says, I'm going to create my own blog software. Why, you ask? Well, I want to be able to write my blog posts in markdown, complete with code formatting and syntax highlighting. I've managed to get the syntax highlighting to work with blogger, but it requires hand editing HTML, which is annoying to say the least. There are other options, but most of them I either strongly dislike, or have a very long history of security issues. A lot of them also do not support markdown. So, why write this post about it? What's the point, you may ask. I am a huge proponent of not reinventing the wheel. And making the decision to write software is not to be taken lightly. My rule of thumb is that if something meets 90% of your needs, you should ask the following questions: 1. Can I live without the 10%? 2. Is there a way to extend the software to add part, or all of the 10%? 3. If there is a way, will it be so painful, that the investment to write your own is worthwhile? In this ...
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Greetings!

Who the hell are you, anyway?

Why hello there, I'm a coffee pot, surfing through a series of tubes on this wonderful place we call the internet.

In all seriousness though, I'm a software engineer who likes to espouse their their opinions into the wild. I'm highly caffeinated, strongly opinionated, and totally lack an ego. I specialize in C#, and have worked at multiple fortune 500's that shall remain unnamed. Am I a good engineer? I'd say no, others would say yes, I've been fortunate enough to have never been laid off or otherwise let go from an engineering position. I think that at least says something.

What kind of stuff have you done?

I've done everything from POS Software, embedded device firmware, credit card processing, hyper scale APIs and Kafka message processors, just to name a few. I am, at least since 2019, a backend developer. All of my UI knowledge died a long time ago with WinForms. (I don't mean I can't, just that I'd be nearly starting from scratch). I've been at this for over 20 years in one form or another professionally, and another 10 years as a hobby. (I'm dating myself, I know).

I've written code in C, C++, x86(_64) assembly, VB6, VB.NET (.NET 1.1, and 2.0. Not core mind you, circa early 2000s .NET), C# (Started at .NET 2.0, again early 2000s variety). These are languages I know well, or used to (in the case of C++, that has evolved much since I last touched it). I've dabbled in other languages, such as Python, Rust and Go.

I've also made a habit of going out of my way to do things that you "can't" do with a language. A good example of this would be writing a console application in VB6, which is not at all supported, unless you're adventurous and wire up windows API calls.

Why the blog?

Well, I firmly believe in pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone. Teaching people comes naturally to me, especially with software engineering, verbally anyway. I want to change that! I want to create something engaging, that not only expresses my opinions, but hopefully helps others learn along the way.

I just wanted to start with a simple post, explaining all of this, while I get this all set up. I can't have an empty blog after all, can I?

That's all for now folks

Thanks for taking the time to read this, despite the fact it said very little. More will hopefully come soon. I'm going to push myself to pick a topic and write about it weekly. I plan to post on Fridays after work. Let's see how this goes?

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I'm going to write my own blog software

As the title says, I'm going to create my own blog software. Why, you ask? Well, I want to be able to write my blog posts in markdown, complete with code formatting and syntax highlighting. I've managed to get the syntax highlighting to work with blogger, but it requires hand editing HTML, which is annoying to say the least. There are other options, but most of them I either strongly dislike, or have a very long history of security issues. A lot of them also do not support markdown. So, why write this post about it? What's the point, you may ask. I am a huge proponent of not reinventing the wheel. And making the decision to write software is not to be taken lightly. My rule of thumb is that if something meets 90% of your needs, you should ask the following questions: 1. Can I live without the 10%? 2. Is there a way to extend the software to add part, or all of the 10%? 3. If there is a way, will it be so painful, that the investment to write your own is worthwhile? In this ...
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