This really feels like writing an introductory section in an academic paper without having any clues on what the paper is going to be about. I have a ton of ideas on post topics for sure, but I really don't know at this point in time how I'm going to present them in a meaningful way.

Maybe I should probably start with why I'm putting out a blog in today's day and age of the modern time where the Internet is densely saturated with endless consumables in the forms of websites, blogs and YouTube channels which come in a very wide spectrum of goodness levels. The last thing I want to do is to add another drop in this endless sea of contents for other people to waste their time on.

Well, I've been seriously thinking a lot about this for a few months now, and there are several reasons behind for finally managed to kick this off. I'll break them down bit by bit. The thing is, this isn't my first attempt to write at all. In fact, there were several tries over the past ten years or so, and none of them actually stuck around, which would probably lead me to my first and most important point.

Stuffs I put out there should prove to be useful to at least one person

When I first gave this "writing" thing a shot while I was in college (and eventually gave up after three seconds), the main hurdle I experienced was, "Why would anyone care?" I wasn't really experienced enough to explain anything useful about any particular topics in question. And even if I wrote something interesting enough, there are an infinite better ways for people to learn about it elsewhere. There were a few attempts to reiterate this thing over the years, but none of them actually last for more than a few moments. About a decade has passed, I've gathered a tiny bit more experience than before, both in professional and personal life, and I still have that thought lingering in the back of my head. But there's one important thing I've learned as well: it doesn't really matter.

It doesn't matter whether something you've put out there is useful to someone else or not. It doesn't matter whether a particular piece of knowledge you blogged about is good or bad. It doesn't matter the way you've solved a very particular piece of problem in a very specific way will help someone out there to avoid falling into the same pitfalls. Because you don't define the "usefulness" of the knowledge you've shared to others. It is the receiving end who will evaluate whether it was actually worthwhile to spend time listening, watching or reading your stuffs. It is the readers and viewers who will decide whether your work is good or bad. If they find it useful to them, they will show their appreciation one way or the other. If people already know about what you're talking about, they will simply move on.

The point is, it doesn't matter what you say or write. Good or bad, useful or useless, simple or complex, they're all relative and subjective. You might assume that your facts may be extremely mundane. But there will always be someone who doesn't know enough about a topic and reading what you've shared will push them towards the next step in their journey. You might be writing something incredibly complex about a particular topic and think that there's nobody nerdy enough to read about it. Believe me, there's always someone who's wandering around the Internet researching about the same topic. The important part is simply to have confidence in your own work.

I just like writing... or at least, I think I do

About five years ago, I've picked up a nice little habit of journaling. For those who don't know, it's just a simple act of recording down a series of events, activities, actions, consequences and, even sometimes, emotions of yourself, which could then be reflected upon at a later moment. Some might say that it's just a cheesy word for keeping diaries, but I'd like to argue that there are a lot of subtle nuances between diaries and journals. Journals are a lot more... intentional.

I could talk all day on why people should generally keep journals upon various aspects of their life. But, for now, let's just say that the biggest benefit of journaling is the act of reflection, where you have to sit down and look back, in my case read back the old entries, and sort of contemplate on my past experiences. It is in a way its own form of meditation. But I promise that this blog isn't going to be about my personal feelings, nor how delightful my peanut butter and sandwich breakfast was, so that other people can mindlessly press a series of abstract buttons and move on with their lives. No! No! No!

Instead, I'd just like to apply the benefits of journaling in a slightly different way by recording down a series of dumb mistakes, weird mishaps and, hopefully, notable lessons learned from my works, passion projects, interests and side endeavors, so that anyone who stumbled upon this blog will at least take away something on the topics of their interests... AND THEN move on with their lives.

So... what am I gonna write about?

There are a few topics at the top of my head at the moment.

• Programming, coding and development related stuffs - I'm not going to bore anyone with lengthy tutorials. The Internet already has enough resources to be discovered on how to do various stuffs using various languages and frameworks in order to achieve a variety of objectives. Instead, I'll try to focus on a few things that walk the fine line between very unique scenarios to certain situations, and are common-but-not-so-common enough to be able to easily Google about. If this sounds a little bit confusing to you, believe me, it does for me too. I just hope I can do a better job at explaining things when I actually get down to it.
• System design and architecture - Again, I'm not going towards tutorials, quoting wiki pages or re-writing text books. Instead, I'll try to point out interesting abstracts on particular design patterns and maybe how to apply them practically in the real world scenarios. Because one thing I find lacking in most of the theoretical references is... well, they're mostly theoretical. For instance, a lot of people know very well about Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) patterns, but they don't know or invest that much time in UML modeling which is in fact the grammar that shape all OOP languages. Another example is, what would happen if you apply the design methodology that is being used for building enterprise-level content delivery platforms in a completely unrelated environment, like making video games.
• Game dev - A programmer by day and a game developer by night; that's usually the tagline I use to introduce myself. But I'm not what you might call a good game developer, not by a long shot. I've been making video games on a sideline for about four years now and all I can show off as part of my work is a collection of crappy games I've put out on my itch.io page, and a whole bunch of dead prototypes rotting in various places of digital storage and code repositories. Still, I'll try to take you on this journey and show you the ins and outs, and ups and downs of designing and making video games as a hobby. Like I mentioned about journaling, hopefully, these would be as much of an infotainment for anyone who read about it, and also for me to look back and reflect about.
• Dev logs - These could generally be about making games either short and long term, game jam experiences or even some other quirky, weird projects I dive into on a whim from time to time. Again, lessons and experiences will always be the main focus.

Those... plus, some Minecrafting, gaming, game reviews, sci-fi, fictions, non-fictions and a bunch of other stuffs that I'm usually passionate about, or simply pique my interest, and may or may not do the same to you too.

This has been quite a lengthy introduction. I promise I'll try to condense the useful information on any of the other posts I'll be putting out here. But for now, here's to the full intention of not letting this post be the last.

Cheers!