Blogging: Style or Content, how will you be judged?

So I spend a lot of time thinking about my blog and wondering,”Should I blog more?” And that leads me to thinking about  the style of my blog. My current style aka theme works well for my needs though there are a few quirks with it, yup look for a future redesign. But what’s more important the style or the content. Can you have poor content but such good style that the users come back and stare thinking, “It’s so beautiful!” with a little drool rolling down their chin? Can that get you through? I don’t honestly know.

 

I do notice however that among the software engineers and coders, or as I called them back in the old days, computer programmers, there seems to be a very broad scope of style and content. Some blogs have great style and great content, these are clearly the winners and will be judge mercifully by the robotic masters, they are among us now. Some have horrible style, and call themselves minimalistic blogs, I call them lazy blogs. I think if your a programmer talking about the subject of web development or whatever you should have a blog that at least puts on a bit of a show for the readers. But that aside, the content is very good Martin Fowlers blog is a good example of this. I went to his blog looked and chuckled at how sad it looked, but the content is solid, also he calls it a bliki.

 

But I wonder again for those that are not familiar with his work, would they just surf away to a new blog without looking? Anyhow I have compiled a list of some of the top programmer blogs out there. So you can look for yourself. All of these have great content, some have great style, and some if not most have both. Where do you stack up?

 

1. Joel on Software (Joel Spolsky)
2. Coding Horror (Jeff Atwood)
3. Seth's Blog (Seth Godin)
4. Paul Graham: Essays (Paul Graham)
5. blog.pmarca.com (Marc Andreessen)
6. Rough Type (Nicholas Carr)
7. Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen (Scott Hanselman)
8. Martin Fowler's Bliki (Martin Fowler)
9. Rands in Repose (Michael Lopp)
10. Stevey's Blog Rants (Steve Yegge)

 

Enjoy!

Thoughts on Chrome

With the release of the new Chrome browser we see a lot of chatter on the web. Every blogger, including myself, is dribbling out one comment or another about the new wonder browser, it's flaws, strengths, and it's future.

Many writers are saying that with it's new found vulnerabilities, it will be hard pressed to take enterprise share away from Microsoft and it's browser, Internet Explorer. And even though many think that this may usher in a new browsing age, or more likely shake Microsoft up enough to get them adding long over due features and improvements to Internet Explorer. I as a developer see another browser that I must test my sites against for compatibility, even though it is based on WebKit.

I think the real problem is that many people are overlooking the entirety of what is really starting to happen. And that is web browsers are about to take a step forward on the evolutionary path towards a true framework. Things have gone on to long with expanding a design that was done quickly based on a standard for displaying documents. It was never intended to do what it currently can and most of the newer functionality was put in place quickly at a rapid pace based on the consumer demand and the developer need to meet those demands.

Chrome is a new design and a step towards the next generation of browsers. But it is still a browser, with lots of improvements. Tabs running in their own process space, add faster JavaScript, thanks to V8, hidden tile bar when maximized to take full advantage of desktop real estate. It's a beautiful piece of work.

So what is the future of Chrome and the Web Browser. I don't know, only time will tell. But I think we are about to see the next incarnation of the OS debates all over again.

Welcome to "The Browser Wars"