Don’t let the lack of blog updates fool you, because I’ve still been working on SICP slowly but consistently. Why the gap in blog posts then? Well, one thing I read recently that really stuck with me was Julian Shapiro’s post on Vanity Metrics. In the article, Julian analyzes different types of goals and the respective ways in which people fall into the trap of defining and trying to hit the wrong metrics. He also provides frameworks that we can use so that we are never beset with the wrong metrics.
So here’s the thing… I think forcing myself to write about my progress on SICP is a vanity metric! The whole purpose of the series was to 1) learn how to code better and 2) signal to readers and other folks in my industry that I’m someone who spends time improving at coding. Writing this series of blogposts is irrelevant to the former because I’m already doing the coding. It does fulfill the latter function, but not exclusively and effectively. This is because I’m still uploading all my code, comments and drawings to GitHub and Notability! In fact, writing the posts has been mostly about copying what I’ve already checked in into the repository and adding some text for flavor.
And this is why I’m drawing this series of blogposts to a close. I’ll continue updating the repository as I make progress and maybe have one celebratory vanity post at the end, but that’s it!