About this blog

It should be evident that this is a tech blog. Googling “tech blog” yields over 100 million results, which would seem to ask the question:

Do we really need another tech blog?

Some complain that the web is littered with blogs and more than 90% of them are bad. This is entirely the wrong complaint. Rather, one could complain that the world is littered with programmers and 90% of them never write about what they do. Writing is a good thing for a variety of reasons, and as G.K. Chesterton wrote**, “if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” The goal here is improvement, and the accountability, discipline, and focus that comes from writing publicly.

So to answer the original question: No, we do not need another tech blog. But I need another one, since none of the other ones are written by me. Whether you need this one is a question to be determined by the actual posts.

I am Eric Wilson, a software developer in central Ohio. Technologies that I like include Python, Java, Clojure, Lucene, Eclipse, Vim, Linux, Git, and the command line. Philosophically, I support agile practices, and the notion of software craftsmanship, though I find it pretentious to label oneself a ‘software craftsman.’ In my current job at Manta I will be working with information retrieval and natural language processing.

Before entering the IT world, I was a math professor. I very much enjoyed teaching mathematics, though I had become very disenchanted with the enterprise of higher education. I’m hoping that my work at Manta is the beginning of a more significant combination of my interest in mathematics with my programming skills.

I’m also the father of five children, the husband of one wife, and a worshiper of Jesus Christ.

** from “What’s Wrong with the World”