Deletion can be an accomplishment

I feel like I've written a lot for this blog recently, but actually I've just been logging in and, after much deliberation, deleting one old blogpost after another. The move to Drupal 7 has given me the tools (and the will and desire) to review such ancient, half-written content, during which process I've found very little that's salvageable: old arguments; points no longer relevant enough to be made; nonsensical first drafts.

But part of writing a blog is unwriting it: not in the sense of removing your hardiest, most flourishing plants; but rather in the sense of clearing out the weeds that rightfully grow on any fertile ground, and sweeping away the clearly failed crops, so that the rest can flourish. As programmers, we should also remember to apply this principle to good programming too: we should not be afraid to trim and remove code.

After all, we're living in the glory days of version control, where the flexibility of systems like git and mercurial seem mindboggling to those of us who grew up with subversion or (worse) CVS. And if you truly embrace distributed VCS, then you need never worry; for then truly shall omnes mutantur; nihil interit.