Who is a programmer? Each of us has their own preconceptions about what it means to be one, and as we will learn on this publication, even the industry professionals don’t agree on what makes one a programmer/developer. Every project is different, and this brings a great variety of positions into our industry, but there is something that almost everyone agrees on — every development process needs an advanced level of cooperation from all team members.
Joining the team effort_
It is my belief that on the internet, with the rise of blogs, forums, social and ultimately Stackoverflow, we have all became a part of the same team. What is the goal we do not know, but one thing is certain, we are all playing together, learning from each other and we all like to think that we are pushing boundaries of something. Maybe we are…
I have spent my teenage years reading other people’s blogs and forums. If it were not for the effort of those countless and nameless people, i may have not became a programmer. Long time ago, I somehow managed to learn PHP basics from a book in Serbian. (Internet spoiled us so much that if you ask me now, i have no idea how anyone ever managed to code without it) Learning to code on the internet, everybody seemed (and sometimes still does) like an expert to me, and it would be much later that i discovered that we all collectively have no idea what we are doing most of the time. I am too shy to ever think of myself as an expert in any field. I am far from that. But I decided to create this publication and capture some of my processes and thoughts, like so many did before me, and enabled me to learn from them.
Additionally, if i ever post something i work on, and someone calls me stupid and explains why their solution is better — Well, yay for me, i learn something. It’s a plus isn’t it? :)
Why Medium_
Short answer, limitations. Long answer, ease of creation. I have been thinking about creating this for some time now. And while i am perfectly capable to create a beautiful bespoke Wordpress template for myself, i am also spoiled and never satisfied by my own work. So when i created that template two years ago, i decided to improve upon it before i start posting. Months passed, template versions changed, goals for the blog changed, and still i never posted anything. Well today i decided to break free from this blank paper scarecrow, and Medium seems like a sweetspot. So far it seems easy to write, post and create. And it is beautiful. I will let other people take care of UX readability etc, and i will take care of the writing. That seems fair, doesn’t it?
I am annoyed at the inability of programmers of the world to create a good web editor like Medium for Wordpress. This is also one of my pain points, and i will be writing about this later on. Maybe even try to make one myself, who knows?
Why Homullus_
I have always been a firm believer in Dieter’s principles of UX (tho he didn’t call them that). Maybe it’s my early studies of Architecture and my impression with Neufert or my later studies of Anthropology are an indicator of my belief in UX.
Anyway, i hate thinking about names and logos for a long time, so i just opened up a Serbian-Latin dictionary and listed all words with Homme as root. Hominid was already taken by a local design company and in spite of my love for anime i decided not to use Homunculus after my girlfriend told me that culos means arse in Spanish. The next one seemed awesome. It had the human aspect, the metrics aspect, the mannequin aspect, UX aspect and even the not so obvious homunculus aspect.
Little man; Manikin; Homunculus
But wait, the content_
At the time of writing this, i have been wanting to write a blog for almost two years. And while i had a whole lot of time to think it through, i am not entirely certain what it will be. So i decided not to categorize anything, and just write, write, write.
You can expect a lot of code, some traveling, some failed and hopefully some successful projects, hacks, thoughts and music uploads.
Truly yours, M.
