It’s been a long while since I blogged. It isn’t good to blog when angry or exhausted, and the quality of my posts have been in decline. The blog had become a liability for me. I basically forced a bunch of posts in the past few years, but I plan to reintroduce myself and the company that I am developing. I have a lot of material for blog posts that I have accumulated over time.
Isn’t it hard to believe that I have not had an outside job for almost a decade, just working seven days a week building my own software company?
I don’t have much of life; I don’t go out, date, or party. I live in the Seattle area, but I haven’t been in the city of Seattle for the several past years.
What do I do?
- I develop software 7 days a week at home, most of the day.
- I listen to university lectures and take online courses to stay educated.
- I read academic papers and textbooks, and books on software and business.
- I stay current on technology…. I learned to write iOS and WP7 applications, learned about Cloud programming.
- I follow news from various sites (hacker news—a site for software entrepreneurs) to stay current
- I attend both software and business conferences.
- I play chess at Crossroads Mall once a month. I watch movies once a month.
- I am training to run in a race at the end of October. I also bike and lift weights to stay fit.
- I go on vacation for about two weeks a year to see my family.
What kind of software do I build?
Basically, desktop software with some kind of AI. My software consists of the following:
- Application/UI framework
- Layout engine.
- Symbolic AI engine.
- DSLs.
I have written and rewritten hundreds of thousands of lines of code. Six years ago, I compared the amount of code that I had rewritten to the open-source version of the .NET libraries, and my line counts were about the same.
I tell my parents that once I ship my first software, that the others will follow extremely quickly, because my designs allow for reuse rate in the high 90s. That I never intended to release just one product but to enable many to be release in quick succession.
I have designed my software, so that it would be easy to port to a different platform—Mac versus Windows versus Web and Tablet versus Phone versus Desktop.
To speed development, I also rely on the following:
- Open source (both code and databases)
- Third party component libraries
- Licensed data and icons
- Run-time and compile-time code generation.
- Declarative programming like DSLs and value-centric (quasi-functional) programming
- C#
Welcome back in blogging Wes! We are many looking forward testing your finding in AI. Are you still focused on dev tooling or do you target as well other kind of software?
What about NStatic?
Posted by: Patrick Smacchia | October 04, 2011 at 03:33 AM
Welcome back. You're living most geeks' dream!
Posted by: Philip the Duck | October 04, 2011 at 07:33 AM
it's good to have you back
Posted by: Eber Irigoyen | October 04, 2011 at 07:42 AM
Happy to see you blogging again! I always enjoyed reading your articles.
Posted by: Jim Geurts | October 04, 2011 at 03:38 PM
So how the heck do you get payed? VC money from 10 years back?
Posted by: Jarle Nygård | October 04, 2011 at 10:44 PM
I remember the demo you gave for a program that could find bugs. I would be interested in a beta release.
Posted by: tobi | October 05, 2011 at 07:57 AM
Hi Wes,
I started with C# 6 years ago after reading your Blog. I wish you would post more frequently, your posts had such great educational value!
Mikhail (Munich)
Posted by: Mikhail | October 05, 2011 at 11:44 AM
Welcome back!
Posted by: Sean Stapleton | October 06, 2011 at 12:28 AM
Does this mean we might see NStatic released?
Posted by: clint | October 07, 2011 at 06:32 PM
Is NStatic still even on the table? I remember reading about this several years ago...but heard nothing about it as of late.
Posted by: Pete | October 17, 2011 at 07:39 AM
Glad to see you are better, looking forward to some interesting reading!
Posted by: LL | October 26, 2011 at 03:08 PM