I like to think.

Thinking is a way of life to me. I think. I reflect. I look at the world, see cars passing by, people walking down the street; and I think – what if? What if there was a better way to do things? What if we could make cars just totally different, or turn stores upside down, or build large machines that do things in radically different ways. I like to take the entire world and just shake it real hard for a moment or two, like a little angry kid who shakes his jar with ants, just to see if anything looks different, and why, and whether that different is better. I have the idea that we haven’t done really, really great things, as a society, because we just haven’t thought hard enough yet.

The software process is like that. I like to ponder how we develop software. Sometimes it strikes me as stupid that we still do things the way we do. That’s why I like to watch Star Trek, because someone in a Hollywood studio had the liberty to sit down and think about what a future starship might look like, and the first thing he did was build computers that didn’t crash. And that makes me wonder, how do we build computers that don’t crash? It’s like taking a paintbrush, stare at a plain, untouched canvas and say to myself: What shall I paint today?

Anyway, I’m ranting. My point is, I like to reflect.

Some of my ideas come to me late in the evening. That’s when you’ll find me walking around, pondering and dissecting the future, or what we do, or what we don’t do. And I argue to myself the merits or non-merits of the case. I tear everything inside out to find the heart of the matter, the pearl of wisdom hidden inside.

Some ideas are good. Some are great, and then I have to remind myself to write them down or blog about them or write a long email to my boss. My former boss, Tom, will be the first to tell you about some emails I sent him, usually some time after midnight.

And then there are those ideas, where I lie down on my bed, staring into the ceiling, and shouting in excitement “of course! that’s why! that’s how we should do it!!” And those thoughts are a little bothersome, because when I wake up in the morning I usually don’t remember what was so darn great about them.

And that bothers me a little, because I have the nagging feeling that those may actually be my very best ideas, it’s just that somehow I don’t realize it.