I've wanted to start a blog for a while, and I've given it a few attempts previously, but hadn't finished anything until now!

After realizing that Twitter (and social media in general, really) is a black hole of human happiness I needed another outlet to post my thoughts and cool stuff I work on. I originally started this specific iteration of my blog back in January of this year but it took a while before I got something usable.

As has happened previously, I ran into my arch nemesis yet again - overambition.

The Eternal Quest to Become Lazier

The experience of setting up this blog seems to capture the greatest challenge I face with my projects. All I need this site to be is a repository of static webpages that I can type up in HTML, maybe some CSS/JS if necessary. However, I started with my head in the clouds too early on. I got ideas of "ooh, what if I made it like this!" and tried adding more features to make things "easier".

The first iteration of this was an entire static site generator written in python. Originally I wanted to be able to generate entire articles from markdown, and I got something working but ultimately, I realized it was too limiting. If I wanted to embed images, or add external components written in JavaScript or anything more complicated I would have to add more and more completely unique syntax, then I realized I was creating a DSL and had to stop myself from travelling fully down the path of madness.

You'd think I would have learned my lesson, but I had several other ideas after that which I never ended up getting around to, leading to the creation of this blog being delayed to hell and back.

However, thank the heavens, I was forced to finish something. I can't say the specifics of *why* I was forced to finish it yet, but needless to say I finally had some sort of external pressure to keep me accountable. I decided to keep it simple - the same as the very first iteration just typed up manually in HTML and CSS. And, well, it works! I'm satisfied with the result for now, my scope creep will have to wait another day.

There is a lot of beauty to be had in simplicity.

If I had to pin down the number one problem in software development, I believe it would probably have to be overcomplicating things. Designing for things that aren't necessary, overblown budgets, overengineered towers of abstraction, and so on all seem to stem from this fundamental problem that we as humans end up placing more work on ourselves than we need to.

And, unfortunately, it seems to be one of those problems we just have to deal with individually. I don't think there's a tool you could invent to solve this. We all just have to do our best in the end.

So keep it simple! Be (a little bit) lazier! Don't be unambitious, but also be careful not to burden yourself with impossible tasks.