Today was the 10th anniversary of John Gruber’s first post on Daring Fireball. Chances are good if you’re reading this site then you also read Daring Fireball. In fact, it’s likely that you found this site in the first place thanks to a link on DF.
I’ve been reading Daring Fireball since 2005 (shortly after I got my first Mac). I remember first reading the DF home page and how hilarious it was. Here was this guy posting links to various articles and websites and then saying something sarcastic about them.
There were no comments on the site and so I had no idea that this weblog I’d stumbled across was already so widely popular (for being so different from a site like Macworld I thought it was an obscure one-off website, and was clueless that it had tens of thousands of daily readers), nor did I know the impact John’s writing would eventually have on my own writing and even on my career.
Design-wise, Daring Fireball has hardly changed in the past decade. Moreover, the subtle humor and sometimes-not-so-subtle sarcasm of John’s writing is still as present now as it was a decade ago. The personality, voice, and tone — all still there, all still instantly recognizable as Gruber.
And but so, as Apple and their products have matured and gone mainstream so too has John’s writing. Gone are the days of Jerry Seinfeld quotes sneaking their way under the DF logo.
In a nut: John’s writing has grown up. Whereby “grown up” I mean “if you compare the writing of today to the writing of 2002, you’ll see that John takes himself a bit more seriously and that his writing is less a bit less playful”.
Speaking of John’s writing:
- Before writing Daring Fireball, there was Fedora Worldwide Media Industries’ Fedora Review where John wrote about bagels.
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My all-time favorite DF article is still Full Metal Jacket.
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I interviewed John more than 4 years ago to talk about writing, DF, how the Linked List began, how he got into Macs, what John eats for breakfast, and more.
In that interview, John stated that two of his favorite weblog writers are were Paul Graham and Dean Allen. Of them he said:
They’re the two who’ve written the most things that simultaneously delighted me (as a reader) and filled my heart with jealousy (as a writer).
Likewise, John Gruber is a writer who has simultaneously delighted me (as a reader) and made me jealous (as a writer).