Hi there. Somehow you made it here and even clicked on the ‘About’ link. Wow. So, here we go. I am a software developer, DevOps engineer and administrator. Well, kind of all of those things. It grew over time: I started as an administrator, later studied computer science, and here we are.
But why?
If you ask me, the most important thing I learned in my studies came from my software engineering professor. She once said: “If you take one thing from this module, let it be this: Always ask ‘Why?’” In her view, the real source of truth lies in answering the question: “Why do you do this? Why do you want that? Why do you behave like that?” Of course, this was in the context of software engineering, and therefore requirements management. But I think she hit the nail on the head, not only for software engineering, but for a lot of other things too. So this raises the question: Why write a blog?
In the last few months, with all this AI stuff happening, I found myself using the web differently than before. I started relying on AI for research, web searches and finding solutions. I used ’traditional’ research methods (a.k.a. googling stuff) less and less and just asked the AI instead. So far, so normal.
But at the same time, something interesting happened. I did not blindly trust the answers, just as I had not blindly trusted search results before. But with AI, I felt like I became more conscious of it. More and more, I started to use AI as an entry point for my research: find the right terms, find options, define the direction. The moment I had a rough direction, I started to dig differently, going into detail on specialized pages. And I noticed that I ended up on blog posts much more often than I would have expected.
With those blogs, I discovered a side of the web that was new to me, even at my age. They carried real-life experiences, clearly labeled as such. Real-life problems, real-life solutions. Very individual, but often transferable. And they proved to be a good source, as long as you keep the ‘one person, one experience’ nature in mind.
At some point I thought: “I am taking a lot from this. I enjoy reading it, and it gives me lots of information I can adapt. This is a nice kind of web.”
And here we are. This is the ‘Why?’. I want to participate. I want to do my part (Starship Troopers reference intended). If just a few people read this and get something out of it, my job is more than done. And if not, well, so be it.