Mark Eschbach

Software Developer && System Analyst

Quest for Perfection

An opinion peice I read a while ago, “If you aren’t embarrassed by v1.0 you didn’t release it early enough”, rings in my ears. On one hand I strive to release early and often while on the other I hoard my imperfect works among some forgotten area so no one will ever encounter the monstrosity. I started this Knowledge Base in the hopes of contributing back to the open community which I learned software development from. Sadly my work sits hidden from the public in a private repository, never to be generated and shipped out.

In an effort to overcome my quest for perfection, I’ve decided to begin publishing the articles in an unfinished state. Research, whether reading books, others’ ramblings on subjects of interest, or getting my hands dirty with the code, I do a lot of it. The unpolished works of others gives me great insight which I normally would not have had. Those of us in technology have adopted blogs as our primary soap box.

For a while I resisted the blog, and I still do. Systems such as WordPress and Blogger are excellent for publishing index and searchable articles which readers may engage in discussions on. However I find the publishing semantics push my mindset back towards finishing the perfect piece of art instead of just getting the pile out there; and don’t get me started on comment spam. I want to go back to the roots of the Web Log.

I feel like being able to see what and when I last updated will help me break the shackles of my strive for perfection. If I’m going to bother keeping an update log, I might as well produce an RSS feed from it too. So, in the next section I’ll begin tackling the requirements.