Jeff Atwood recently wrote a post called “Don’t Go Dark” in which he discusses the problem of developers essentially disappearing from a project to work in isolation only to appear with massive, poorly understood (except by the developer) changes/updates.

Some of you have noticed that since my last post over a month ago, I’ve gone dark. I’d like to thank those of you who have messaged me on reddit or emailed me directly. It’s nice to know that my attempt to be held accountable to this project by making it public was successful.

Unfortunately, unlike the developers Jeff wrote about, I don’t have a large knowledge-bomb to explode on you. You see, the simple truth is that I’ve been too preoccupied with “real life” to really get any work done on the project, let alone blog about it.

It’s my own fault, really. I picked a bad time to start on this journey. I’ve been part of a project at work for the past year and a bit, and the project was deployed to production on Sunday afternoon. For the past month, I’ve been being completely wiped out by my last minute workload, as well as having been on call since deployment. The project was a “success” (i.e. it’s deployed and it works) but there was a minor problem with the transition to production that has cascaded into a major headache of support issues.

Beyond the tedium of everyday life, there has been movement on this pet project of mine. That movement has been largely related to planning and my inability to see the forest for the trees (more on that in my next post).

Regardless, for those of you concerned for the status of this project, let me assure you that I am alive, I’m getting back on track, and there will be more things to write about soon. Even if work swallows me whole, it’s only 16 days until I have a nice two week vacation. If I can’t find time for this project on vacation, then the project is likely doomed.

More soon!