It's incredible how many people are paid to write articles about programming despite knowing fuck all about the subject. Take a look at a site like PHPBuilder.com and poke through some of the example code in the articles. Most of the time it's absolute dog shit. I guess this is because the good programmers are being paid to write software, while the bad programmers are being paid (a lot less) to write articles about programming.

There's a real lack of articles written by good programmers, which is why sites like The Old New Thing and Joel on Software and Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby are such treasures.

Someone over at the Joel on Software forums has posted an excellent rant detailing his gripes with Ruby on Rails. I couldn't have said it better myself. The only thing I'd add is maybe a paragraph or two about the headaches involved in deploying Rails in a production environment, especially when Lighttpd isn't an option. I'm too lazy to write those paragraphs now, but suffice it to say that it can be a huge pain in the ass.

The way I see it, there are three major types of bloggers:

1. The “Dear Diary” blogger. Shamelessly writes about intensely personal things and doesn’t care that the entire world is reading. Examples: Lissell, damn near everyone with a LiveJournal.
2. The “A funny thing happened at work today” blogger. Posts revolve around semi-personal stories, musings, opinions, and occasionally fiction or entertainment for entertainment’s sake. Examples: me, Eilonwy, GreyStork.
3. The “Today in the Senate” blogger. Writes about current events, politics, technology, or some other specific subject, rarely if ever discussing anything of a personal nature. Examples: The Old New Thing, Joel on Software, Techdirt.

It’s not uncommon for someone to move up the blogger scale—say, from being a type 1 blogger to being a type 2 blogger—but people rarely go from 3 to 2, and almost never from 2 to 1. There’s probably a good reason for it.

I occasionally have the urge to write about something personal. What stops me is remembering what’s happened when I’ve done that in the past. There’s something to be said for honesty and openness, but it often winds up weirding relationships and biting you in the ass.

The scariest thing in the world is realizing that people I know actually read the crap that I write here.