I noticed only today that the article I wrote about Ruby/Amazon for Dr. Dobbs Journal is on-line, and probably has been for a year or more. That’s nice to see.
That’s one thing I do lament about my career as a system administrator/programmer thus far: I haven’t done much writing for professional publications and I’ve never held a presentation at a conference. I have no RFC to my name and, if you scan the shelves of your local computer bookshop, you won’t find any volumes bearing my name.
The lack of conference presentations is largely a result of my own choice, as I have never even submitted a proposal, allergic as I am to the idea of speaking in public. That’s something I have yet to overcome. It’s a shame, because when I worked for Google, you only had to put your e-mail address to a proposal to gain an invitation to speak, because a Google speaker at a conference works like a magnet. Everyone is eager to hear how things work behind the scenes at that company. Unfortunately, I was too shy to take advantage of this.
It would have been nice, however, to have done more professional writing. I still could, of course, but I’m no longer active in the field, in the thick of it, drilling deep into a particular area of the job. As such, no particular subject seems obvious now to write about. Being in semi-retirement, it’s going to take a large effort on my part to change that.