Good Coders Code, Great Reuse: Read It & Beat It

In my relentless efforts to dominate the software development blogosphere, I am trying to find out how to beat all competitors. As you can understand, that's not an easy thing to do!

So I've decided to ask the authors themselves to help me out. They are much better qualified to do a SWOT-analysis of their blogs than I am.

The second person to assist me is Peteris Krumins, author of Good Coders Code, Great Reuse. On the latest Top 100 Blogs for Developers Peteris' site is listed at #38. The blog good coders code, great reuse is a about programming, hacking, software reuse, software ideas, computer security, google and technology.

These are the questions I asked Peteris, and the answers he gave me:

Why did you start blogging, and what's your goal now?

I have always been very passionate about computers and as a result I have learned about all areas of computing. I started blogging because I wanted to tell everything that I knew to other people, and I seem to be succeeding.

My current goal is to expand my blog on mathematics and physics (as a sub-blog, the main topic stays programming), add a mini-blog for posts that are just a few paragraphs in length (like small how-tos, Unix tricks, etc.), and add a knowledge database where I can add all the other knowledge that I have.

What are the strengths of your blog?

I think that the main strength of my blog is my wide knowledge in computing. I can write posts on all kinds of topics thus making it interesting to larger audiences.

And what are its weaknesses?

The weakness is the blog platform I am using. It does not allow me to expand easily because of the messy code it has. I am currently solving this problem by writing my own blog platform.

What opportunities do you see for your blog?

I want my blog to be my CV. Instead of sending my CV to companies, I want to send them the URL to my blog and say, "here, this is everything that I know!".

And what about its threats?

I don't think my blog has any threats! I'll just keep writing it for years to come.

Which of your posts are you most proud of?

The trilogy of posts on working effectively in the Bourne-again shell (bash):

• First part: Bash's Emacs Editing Mode
• Second part: Bash's Vi Editing Mode
• Third part: The Definitive Guide to Bash's History

Article series on MIT's "Introduction to Algorithms"

And finally My Job Interview At Google.

And which ones would you like to erase from history?

I don't think I'd like to erase any of my posts from the history. They all have some value.

How can I make my blog more successful than yours?

Well, according to your "Top 100 Blogs for Developers" statistics your blog ranks #37 and mine #38, so technically speaking, your blog is already a little bit better than mine… but allowing some statistical uncertainty, I could have ranked #37 and you could have ranked #38, right? In that case I suggest you to improve your statistical methods to minimize the uncertainty and hope that you really are #37! 🙂

And those were the answers given by Peteris, author of good coders code, great reuse. If his answers have piqued your interest, please go and read his blog!

In the meantime, I will continue with my cunning plan, and ask some more blog authors to evaluate themselves…

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