About Me

Details updated June 7, 2010

I've always hated writing 'About Me' sections. In my view writing should be about the content, not the author, but since when did the world work the way I want it to? And I have to admit, it does make sense for a first post.

Who are you?

I'm Eric Burnett. Currently I am a software engineer at Google, working on Ad Exchange. This blog is not about my work, however, so don't expect much in that direction. Prior to this I was at the University of Waterloo earning a bachelor's in Computer Science¹, a topic on which I would be happy to field questions :).

I have always been fascinated by computers, and since I was in elementary school I knew I would end up in a career working with them. My first exposure to programming came actually quite late, when I was 15 or 16. I took a summer school course that had us making games in Macromedia Director (now Adobe Director) using its custom scripting language. That was also my first exposure to the realities of our industry: the game I was making didn't get completed on time, even with features cut. Despite that, I immediately found myself fascinated by programming and understanding the magical world inside the computer, and so during the next year I taught myself C++. The rest, as they say, is history.

Since then I have learned that it doesn't matter what language or tools you are using; programming is just a realization of the thought process of the programmer. From my point of view it doesn't matter what you know, any programmer worth their salt can learn what they need to know in short order. What matters more is how you think, and that's the part that fascinates me. This blog is part of that: in part, it's the story of my quest to know what makes us tick.

Why start a blog?

That's the real question, isn't it? I've been reading blogs for a couple years now, but recently I've found myself with ideas that I want to share, and nobody to share them with. I don't know if anyone will ever read this, but if nothing else the act of writing these ideas down forces me to think them through in a way that pure contemplation never quite does (more on that later). Posting this is both a challenge and a commitment to myself to keep thinking, questioning, and finding new insights that are worth sharing.

The strongest inspiration for this blog has come from reading Coding Horror, one of the most widely read programming blogs out there. If you haven't heard of it, I suggest you go take a look. I have a long list of other blogs that I read, but it was this one that showed me the power of a blog – Jeff Atwood consistently made me think. It also happens to be well written and humorous – hell, even the format of this post was borrowed from Jeff's About Me page.

What's with the name?

[This section relates to the old name, "Intelligent Conversation"]

There is a whole story behind the name of this blog. "Intelligent Conversation"…sounds a bit conceited, doesn't it? A couple months ago, I did a google search on those two words, and very little of merit showed up. There were a couple links about finding a good date, and two links on finding intelligent conversation on the internet (written in 1998 and 2002). Their view? It could be found if you looked hard enough, but it wasn't easy. Now, those were written six to ten years ago, and the internet has changed a lot in that time. I haven't looked at any forums or chatrooms recently, but I do know one place it can be found – blogs. As the internet matured we have found a way to take advantage of the one-to-many nature of the internet, with a few people writing and many people reading. In this new form, it's a lot easier to find people saying things that you want to hear, and you don't have to worry about sifting through spam². With blogs there is history, reputation, and people own their words and think before they speak – what progress we have made!

There is a second reason for the name. As I mentioned earlier, the act of writing ideas down forces me to think them through. I find this holds for any other kind of conversation as well, be it giving a presentation or chatting with a friend. It's easy to have an idea and see the merit in it, even when it's half formed. But before you hold it up for scrutiny, you'd be well advised to finish it off and polish it up nicely, because people will be examining it closely. If they like what they see then you've taught them something, and if not, well, then they get to teach you something! And hey, even if nobody is around to see, you still get to walk away with a nice shiny idea. Intelligence drives conversation, but conversation drives intelligence too, and I want a piece of the action.

What's with the new name?

[Section added January 27, 2010]

All the reasons listed for the original name still apply. But I missed one key insight the first time around.

"Intelligent Conversation"…sounds a bit conceited, doesn't it?

Unfortunately yes, it does. And with the way content is consumed on the internet, the first impression is all I'll get. Very few people will ever read the rationalization behind any name I choose, so it is important that I choose one that gives off the right impression. Considering I was getting embarrassed to give out links, it was time for a change.

Where can I find you?

Feel free to drop me an email at ericburnett@gmail.com. I can't promise I'll respond, but it will always get read.

Footnotes

1. Technically, I earned an Honours Bachelor's of Mathematics in Computer Science Co-op degree, with a minor in Combinatorics and Optimization. But don't hold that against me.
2. This doesn't hold for blog comments. On small blogs comments can work fine, but the more popular a blog gets, the harder to manage comments get. Part of this is from real spam, but technology is helping mitigate that. A larger part is just the nature of blogs: blogs are an open discourse, person to world. But their comments are a two way conversation, and relatively quickly there are just too many participants for any one person to follow. It doesn't help that the signal to noise ratio is usually quite low for blog comments, but I think the problem is systemic.