Welcome to "Skegging It Out"

AFAIK, I introduced the phrase "Skegging It Out" to the world in the preface of my first book, Imperfect C++. I learnt it from my first commercial mentor, the redoubtable Andy Thurling, who gave me my first great insight, which is that no one in software engineering knows everything. Having now done 15+ years in the industry, and written 3 (well, 2.6, to be precise) books, I can certainly attest to this truth. I know that I don't know everything - don't ask me any questions on floating-point types! - and I know that a lot of other people don't know everything. (Some of the horrors I've seen in my consulting lead me to ponder whether 80+% of the programmers of the world would be far better suited to some other pursuit.)

Anywhat, this blog will be a place to record miscellaneous, non-portentous, things learned. Examples would be:

• how to use your own domain with BlogSpot
• tricks and tips with various IDEs
• simple scripting / OS survival tricks
• ... and so forth

If you're after information on what's going on with my open-source libraries, check out my STLSoft Musings blog.

If you're after philosophical insights into the programming world, check out my occasional Artima blog.

If you want to learn about all the tricks and pitfalls of extending the C++ Standard Template Library (STL), including many of the issues its original designers (and most current practitioners and authors) didn't consider, then you should purchase and wade your way through my latest book, Extended STL, volume 1: Collections and Iterators.

If you want to learn the dark, complex secrets how to write the world's most robust, most flexible and fastest formatting and logging C++ libraries, you'll have to wait until I'm up to 3.0 books, and the latest, Breaking Up The Monolith: Advanced C++ Design without Compromise, has been published, hopefully later this year.

If you want to write mean things about the arrogant, autarchic, red-headed step-child of the C++ world, you could adulterate the Wiki page that's been started about me.

If, however, you want to just borrow some hard-won lessons from someone who knows just enough to get by in the majority of technology areas in which he's not expert, then this blog is for you. I make no promises about subject matter, focus, frequency, gravity, or quality. All I will endeavour to do is share the knowledge any time I learn something useful.

Can't say fairer 'n that, can ah?

Matt

P.S. If anyone knows where Andy Thurling is, or if, Bob-permitting, Andy reads this, please let me know!