I’m happy to announce that at about the same time I became a DZone Most Valuable Blogger and a JavaCodeGeeks author. Some of my posts have been appearing on various blogs, community sites and aggregators for a while (especially those on Clojure and functional programming), but being invited to participate in something like these two programs is quite a new experience.

Some parts of this blog is ranting and bragging, but the main purpose has always been to learn and share knowledge. I wouldn’t have learned so much without the blog – just getting something to work is a lot easier than understanding it enough to be able to explain it to someone. We all know that the community is quite demanding. I learned the hard way that writing too shallowly, repetitively, or without proper understanding is immediately punished. On the other hand, it’s truly exhilarating to see my post mentioned by people I really admire, or make it to the front page of Hacker News.

The most rewarding part is always the comments. Not only does it mean that someone has visited the site, but also that they actually cared to read the post and share their insights or related knowledge.

Thanks, guys!