Going slightly OT here, but I wonder: Is Raymond doing the old new thing for free or does he get some MS company time for it.
On one hand, he clearly does hardcore technical stuff on the job so he can't have much time. The blog meanders between hard core windows programming and human interest stuff. All that says hobby project.
But it runs on microsoft infrastructure, he must put in a lot of time to write the posts and curate the discussions. The marketing value for microsoft must be non-trivial. So that says company provided resources.
On one hand, he clearly does hardcore technical stuff on the job so he can't have much time. The blog meanders between hard core windows programming and human interest stuff. All that says hobby project.
But it runs on microsoft infrastructure, he must put in a lot of time to write the posts and curate the discussions. The marketing value for microsoft must be non-trivial. So that says company provided resources.