Happy Birthday, Blog
Today it is exactly one year since I pick up on blogging after a long break. To celebrate, I’ll go grab a brew and share some of my highs and lows from my year as a resurrected blogger.First of all, I’d like to give a big thank to you. Without you reading, it wouldn’t make much sense to maintain this blog - except for the (rather frequent) occasions I Google for something I vaguely recall having written.
The year in numbers
The Economist, which is my favorite weekly news magazine, releases a paperback “the world in numbers” book every year. My new blog turning one is a great opportunity for me to share some facts and stats about this blog.If you’re reading this in an RSS reader, you are one of my 691 subscribers - thank you! If you’re not, chances are that you’re one of the 75,778 unique visitors to andersnoras.com during the last 12 months - thank you for stopping by!
The top ten most popular posts were:1. Introducing Quaere - Language integrated queryies for Java - The announcement for my Quaere project, which has gotten much attention since I unveiled it at JavaZone in September2. Behind the scenes of the planning DSL - A deepdive into the code that made the examples in the third most popular post possible.3. I’m coming down with a serious case of the DSLs! - This post showcased a fluent interface based DSL I wrote.4. Software Factories - Another Unlearned EJB Lesson - I’m glad to see that this post has made it so far up the ranks, even with a somewhat misleading title. This post is about achieving agility through maintainable code. 5. NHibernate: Mapping a Class to Several Tables - The name says it all, still people should read about the joined table pattern instead of reading this one.6. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It’s a DSL! - This post offers my views on the old fluent interface, internal or external DSL discussion.7. Look Mom, No Checked Exception - This post was intentionally ironic, and it stirred up a lengthy discussion around checked exceptions. AFIK, this is the only time I’ve gotten a negative rating at DZone.8. Bare naked LINQ - This post explains some of the mechanics behind LINQ and how they relate to Quaere.9. DSL Tools: A Complex Solution for a Simple Problem - This one is a rant about the applicability of the examples used in the DSL Tools book. It’s not important, and it doesn’t deserve to be on the top ten list. 10. Mean Fiddler: REST-style query service - This was a follow up to Ayende’s Bumbler stunt.
The tree least popular posts were:90. Scheduled Maintenance89. Reignite the browser wars88. Podcast of my JavaZone talk
Surprise, Be Novel, Be Nice
For the readers of my previous blog, the biggest surprise this year was probably that I suddenly stared writing about Java. There were a number of reasons for doing so. First and foremost, I started a working for a new employer in March and Java is the most widely used development platform there. Another reason was that I saw Quaere as a great opportunity to learn the mechanics of LINQ through experimentation while contributing to the Java community. This has been very awarding, and even if there the project has been a little quiet lately, I intend to keep working on this for the year to come.Readers who care more about .NET should also look forward to the next year as I intend to get busy with some ground breaking .NET-experimentation. (We’ll at least, I will write more about .NET stuff…)
With a few exceptions, the top ten list above is close to what I would have guessed. There is a common theme for the posts on that list, they provide information that is not easily found other places, they bring refreshing views on popular topics and similar. The ones on the bottom are dead right boring. I hope to write more novel blog post in the year to come.
Some of my posts this year have been a little edgy, and even if these bring value, I hope to write with a calmer and less aggressive tone next year.
Last but not least, I need to say thank you again. Hope you’ll stay for another year!