Cais.co Notation

Following the same path multiple times between two points might be boring and mundane. Still, consistency can bring a certain amount of comfort. Repetition is close to consistency, and repetition and consistency can often lead to great things. Practice makes perfect, or so the old saying goes.

The path between two points may not always be the most efficient or even practical, but that should also be measured against the results and what is wanted when you are trying to get from A to B. Just traversing the distance is one matter, but if you are retracing your steps and looking for ways to improve then that consistent behavior also gives you a benchmark to measure potential improvements.

When trying to maintain a consistent approach leading to perpetual improvement, continuous review of that path is necessary to ensure that improvement opportunities are taken advantage of. As muscle memory provides for consistent behavior, it does no harm to look for and find better exercises to work through.

Consistent interface elements, due to their familiarity, enhance user experience. Users can learn the meaning of an element in one area and expect the same behavior when they encounter a similar element elsewhere. This consistency breeds comfort.

Consistency begets simplicity by its uniform nature. Complex systems built with consistent design can have their steep learning curve smoothed out with consistent design and behavior. Stay the course, and be consistent.

A DevDoc, or Developer/Development Document, defines what the developer expects their code to do. It may not necessarily cover everything it can do; users tend to be quite imaginative, if not downright looney, in their approaches, but it will help define and manage expectations for the code.

A DevDoc is not documentation; it is not meant for public-facing documentation but as an internal reference by support services or documentarians to help clearly define and recommend uses for the feature or function the code addresses.

Given the developers’ expectations and a working knowledge of the platform on which the code is being deployed, the DevDoc also provides some framework elements for quality assurance (QA) testing purposes. However, a DevDoc is not a QA guideline.

A DevDoc can often be a simple, short, bulleted list of features and functions. No significant details need to be explained in depth about how the code was written and the reason why it may not even need to enter the conversation.

• What does the code do?
• Where can the features be seen?
• How do the changes interact with the rest of the codebase?
• What other features are affected by these changes?

Of course, the above is not an exhaustive list or even a recommended list of questions to answer in the DevDoc, but your support services and documentarians who receive this information will be grateful.

Besides, a DevDoc is a great way to close the loop and review whether the proposed solution addresses the original request.

Am I back? No.

However, I still use WordPress when I want to create a new website, which has happened here.

Is this a new website? Technically, yes, but the domain is again under my control and not likely to fall under someone or something else’s control going forward.

Does the phrase “pried from my cold, dead hands” ring and bells? You can believe that must happen for Cais.co to leave my care, again.

So, there’s that. Will this be enough for me to start writing again and leave this digitized journal version to posterity? Time will tell.

I write, think, and write some more. I overthink my writing and paint myself into a marvelously designed corner of writer’s block. I’ve been caught in this vicious cycle too many times to count lately, with the latest victim being a promising work of fantasy fiction: The Bellweather Chronicles (feel free to visit ReiStache.com for some first-draft excerpts).

Now, with all that said. I do like to write in markdown. I like it so much that I would much rather spend weeks looking for just the right platform to use rather than continuing with the aggravating, frustrating, disappointing thing I fondly remember as WordPress.

Some may say that progress requires change, but too much change morphs the thing into something it no longer serves. A thing that is now mostly too difficult for the average Luddite to use easily. Lost to the masses is the democratization of publishing, a thing formerly known as WordPress.

What is being called WordPress today is different from the product or platform that enamored me in the past to the degree that I turned in my 25-year career in warehouse management to start over in technical support.

I have no regrets about making the change. There have been challenges, but today, I serve in a role that lets me help people help people, and I couldn’t be more satisfied with the work or feel more fulfilled—something I was led to believe would happen but never did within the WordPress ecosystem.

~ Cais.