Writing as a form of learning new concepts

This year one of my main goals is to "put myself out there". Naturally I tend to be less audible, do my job and avoid the spotlight as much as possible but this year I want to step out of the comfort zone a little (it's gotten a bit too comfy in there) and try out writing. I do this for two main reasons:

1. Connecting with new people
2. Enhancing my knowledge on a topic

You see there's a mainstream quote that goes something like

when one teaches, two learn.

which I think is a brilliant quote because for one it forces the teacher to solidify their knowledge before passing it down to another and secondly it creates an avenue for the teacher to also learn if there happens to be an aspect of the topic that they don't understand quite well.

I'm starting to learn nodejs in depth - not express, not nestjs, just raw and unfiltered nodejs and writing about my learnings would not only expose my knowledge gaps to a wider community who would be quick to call out on my errors, but also serve as a reference point if I was to forget such concepts later down the line.
I think the mistake most developers make when transitioning into backend development with nodejs is to immediately pick up frameworks after a few lessons on creating a server or reading contents from a file which to be honest I don't view as such a horrible act, I mean here is a snippet on how to send a "hello world" message using both nodejs and express as a server

nodejs

const http = require('http');

const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
  res.writeHead(200, {
    'Content-Type': 'text/plain', 
  });
  res.end('Hello world')
});

server.listen(3000);

express

const app = require('express')();
app.use('/', (req, res) => res.send('hello world')
app.listen(3000)

I mean it's immediately obvious why you would want to use express right off the bat but this creates a huge knowledge gap into the underlying workings of nodejs and if a deep technical problem was to surface (memory leaks anyone? 👀), I don't think stack overflow would be enough to save you.

But naturally you get to a stage in your career where you move on from using existing frameworks and libraries to either wanting to contribute to them or creating your own entirely whether that be for internal or public use and at that point you will find yourself running back to the basics -- very much like I am right now 😅

So here's to more learning AND writing this year 🥂

Based opinion but for me a good measure of when to know you don't understand a technical topic quite well is when you can't educate a non-technical person on how it works or it's concept

Comments

[Ini Ekanem]

Just like you, I always prefer to stay behind the spotlight. I just do my thing and call it a day. I was also never really interested in writing articles but after reading this article I suddenly have the urge to start.

[Arinze Obi]

Just start! there really is no down side to it + it serves as a reference point for your learnings