The Freak Parade

So I had this blog post all ready to go about a common colloquial "accent" developing amongst bloggers in the .NET social media scene. It turned out to be a pretty stupid post by most standards, but even worse I found myself trying to be witty, which is a big red flag to <Ctrl-A>, <Delete> before I humiliate myself  beyond redemption and am forced to commit Hari Kari in front of my children, who I’d gather would be too horrified by the spectacle even to scream, and I don’t want to put them through something like that. No parent does. Even so I maintained the original title of the post as a keepsake of the words that got deleted; a lock of hair from a lover lost at sea.

Instead, as a tribute to my aborted attempt to be amusing and insightful, I decided to take a few moments to celebrate the coder-bloggers who do manage to transcend the usual "here’s the facts as I see them" style of tech-blogging and really make the English language dance, either by playing it like an instrument or by shooting at its feet.

So as to immediately contradict myself I’m going to start my celebration not with a blogger but with a particular post I read today and which, based on the title, I would never have bothered to read except that we’ve been flirting with XP here at work so it caught my attention. The post, The Agile 800 Pounds Gorilla [sic] is a mind blowing piece of satire. The author is clearly not a native English speaker and yet wields the language with more skill than 99.9% of the native English speaking technologists I have come across. (A Samurai armed with wiffle bat will still beat the snot out of a redneck armed with a sword.) The essay itself is a satirical tale of the mythical Enterprise, ceremoniously re-branding its Kafkaesque bureaucracy as an Agile process, and the melodramatic interpretive dance it puts itself through to prove its Agile-ness. The slightly faltering English completes the charm of the piece.

My favorite consistent voice in the blogosphere right now is that of Mike Duncan. If you like your entertainment and your education mixed together, read his blog. If I could write like Mike I’d quit my day job and blog for a living, something I wish he would do because his posts are pretty far and few between (but worth the wait).

A close tie with Mr. Duncan is Steve Yegge,  who is much more prolific. His writing is absolutely top notch and thoroughly entertaining even when the topic is mundane (which it rarely is).

My next favorite writing style is that of the mysteriously code named Ayende Rahien. His fragrant blend of an insatiable passion for programming, mildly haphazard English and penchant for metaphors is … unique. It is also thoroughly enjoyable. If you have a taste for language at all and want a very special treat read the Manning EAP edition of his book about building DSLs in Boo – it doesn’t matter if you have any interest in Boo or DSL’s (although you will get two treats if you do) – there is a wild carnival of language in store for you. Get the EAP edition though, for I fear they will edit much of the wonderful flavor out of it before it goes to production.

Speaking of which, I have seen Ayende’s signature "ellipses" construct , which I have termed the "pause for euphemism", being bandied about recently on Twitter. Fascinating. Never for an instant believe your mind is an island unto itself or merely the window of a cockpit from which you pilot your life – we are a seething sea sloshing into and through one another at every moment.

Finally, an honorable mention goes to Kyle Baley, The Coding Hillbilly. His blog doesn’t have the rigorous, consistent hilarity of Mike Duncan or Steve Yegge, or the spicy mad scientist-ness of Ayende Rahien, but it is light hearted, well written, and generously peppered with self-effacing hillbilly jokes. A pleasant and often amusing read.

I recommend subscribing to all of these folks immediately (although you probably are subscribed to them already). I read a lot of blogs, but most of the blogs I read out of a neurotic sense of fear that I will miss some critical piece of technical insight that would have enabled me to write software that provides real business value instead of software that inadvertently shorts out old people’s pace makers as they walk past our building. These few blogs I read for pleasure. And fear.