Jakob Nielsen's latest AlertBox makes a point about Web publishing that may not be obvious: your influence has very little to do with your ranking in the overall media universe, your influence is based on how coherent your readership is within the niche you target. Game Developer, a magazine I founded almost 10 years ago, has a small circulation by trade industry standards (and a trivial circulation compared to mass-market magazines), but that circulation includes programmers at every game software company in the world.

The same rules apply to Web sites and blogs. It should not be your goal to be parodied, it should be your goal to reach people whose readership means something to you. In my case, that means readers who know that the gaps between the possibilities, perceptions, and common practices of software development will determine the success or failure of a programming technology. My goal isn't to improve the state-of-the-art, it's to improve the state-of-the-practice. I can't post like Chris Brumme on CLR internals , but I know from the people that I talk to that many programmers have not fully internalized the concepts of object-oriented programming, much less the Common Type System. My goal is to be a link (hopefully, with some influence in both directions) between people who are making .NET the platform for enhancing productivity for software developers and the people seeking those gains, while working full-time just trying to do their job.

So, if you think some of my posts are too obvious and some my posts are too theoretical, you're my audience!