As a software engineer it’s been a couple of years that I’m saying to myself that I’m going to start writing blog posts tomorrow, next week or even...
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I fully agree with this but know that it can be very difficult to know how to start.
Most people are afraid of writing because they just don't know how to write the post itself. This was/is also the case for myself.
The best thing to do in that case is just write for yourself. You'll learn how to communicate better over time.
Just start writing something. You don't have to finish it in a day or two, write some paragraphs then come back and reread it, add some paragraphs, edit it, then you'll see that you are developing a skill.
Nice, thanks for the tip.
You welcome.
Thanks for the tip, I also find myself in this boat.
Thank you!
I wish I write blog, but every time I think I could use that time to do some more coding.
Do you have examples or really short posts blog, that doesn't take a lot of time?
Yes, it takes some time, but I do it when I'm not programming and have free time.
Hey, you can have a look to my "Tiny Tips" thread for examples: dev.to/tandrieu/tiny-tips-ordering...
If you have one small habit that really makes your life easier, and you notice nobody use it, just write about it. It takes less than 10min to write, less than 1min to read it and can be really helpful for other peoples.
I wish every blog also stated "years of experience with which languages and stacks, along with examples of the experiences"
It's just wishful thinking, but there are already a million blogs out there, 99% written by people who literally just learned about the subject that day and write something that sounds very informed but is often missing very important key components and even important insights that only come from real world experience with the subject.
so we have an internet full of blogs and tutorials that get you halfway there and then leave you hanging.
I've run into this plenty of times where i had to track down half a dozen blogs/tutorials and combine the info from all of them to finally get whatever it was i needed to do to actually work.
So sure, everyone write more, learn more...but please also state if you're still wet behind the ears, or have a decade of disgruntled experience to pass on ;)
Sorry @rav, I struggle to agree with the point about "still wet behind the ears".
Number one; and you already agreed on this, is that there is millions, if not more copy-paste-repeat work out there that is "half-baked". It will never change. The reason being most of it is some lame attempts to sell Companies' SaaS, Services, etc. And all to frequently they continue referring to their own firm, software or service.
It takes a minute to spot those. Read on or step away are the two options.
Secondly; the post of @nasirovelchin is about Learning through Blogging, not content writing.
Thirdly; most of us here are scared shit-less to write anything that will be public-facing, due to the fear of being judged as to "light" or to "wet behind the ears". So they hide in fear of reactions like this.
I wholeheartedly agree with Elchin. And my advice is to any of you that still have your doubts: Write, and write in as much detail as you need to in order to have a full, meaningful and learning experience with yourself.
Forget what the other readers might say, think, or even do with your work. Focus on what you are trying to teach yourself. Whether it be a quick two-minute read of something you need constant reminding of doing differently, or a two-hour read. It does not matter.
If you are happy that what you have "taught yourself" is clear and understandable by you, POST it already. If you are going to cheat on yourself by copy-pasting stuff that you still don't understand well enough, so be it. Best you don't waste time in cheating yourself.
However, "wet-behind-the -ears" students are far less prone to doing things half-assed than the overly-confident, all-knowing arrogant ones. Most of these beginner students would rater admit they are unsure, vs claiming they know exactly how something works.
If someone else happens to find your "self-tuition" valuable, all you can hope for is a "touched heart" in some remote corner of the post. If you are fortunate, someone that has been where you are now will pat you on the back and help you find clearer answers to remove your doubt.
Whether you are "wet behind the ears" is irrelevant.
If someone can't learn something from you "the child", then they are incapable of learning from another college professor.
I think you misunderstood my point.
When i mentioned writers being wet behind the ears, it was more that this is generally an unknown.
Right? when you read a blog you rarely know the skill level of the author.
If you're experienced you can quickly spot the issues in their writing and things that are missing and so on.
Newbies [the vast majority of devs have less than 5 years experience] can't spot the missing info. They don't have the experience to see when a blog is missing valuable information, so they learn either the wrong thing, or spend days trying to follow a tutorial that just doesn't work. I've even heard of newbies just giving up because they got stuck on something for a week, and often it's because of these badly written works.
By noting their own skill level, authors can be honest in how complete their writing is or is not.
This would only help us all
Thank you for your reply and clarification, Ravavyr.
Your points makes more sense when read in this context, however I've seen many an article by more advanced devs that simply assume and never mention the "obvious-to-them" in their tutorials. After-all, in their minds they are writing for the more advanced audience. So we're stuck again.
Your words "I've even heard of newbies just giving up because they got stuck on something for a week, and often it's because of these badly written works." rings loud and clear with me personally too. I was on many a verge of telling it all to go to hell. But even when reading more experienced dev's work, for the reasons given above. "Step 1, Step 2, Step 5, Conclusion. Huh! Am I that stupid?"
What made it even worse for me was the great intolerance towards very new beginner-devs found on Stackoverflow. I hated the site, especially when some poor newbie got told to go to hell, and no or clear explanation was given as to why they should scoot away. I have never dared open my mouth there, and probably will never do so. Even when I might get to senior level. For me' it's simply not worth the "ego-stroke" many of those d!ck-gods are after.
In the end I learned one thing: Go and verify everting from at least three different sources. And slowly over time I found that it works as a great filter.
The probability of two totally unrelated people stating the same knowledge vs one disparate out-lier being wrong, indicates fairly well that the guidance presented might be worthwhile spending more time on.
Then I discovered sites like DEV and Quicy's freeCodeCamp. I started getting value for my time and found that there's no such thing as stupid or incorrect questions there. It was and still is a great place to come to, be relaxed about it and ask or debate away.
There are also orders of magnitude more ladies on both the mentioned sites and that is another indication to me that no matter what your experience levels and gender are, you feel welcome.
I also often see the pressure on writers to be as succinct as possible, because its said that "people don't read anymore and will swipe your stuff away if there's nothing else but text."
Well I simply don't care about that anymore. I've decided to write to myself, do it as well as I can, give PROPER WORKING PRACTICAL examples, try to keep the flow logical from one thing to the next and insert whatever "history or reminders" I feel needed when trying to create associative links in my mind that's related to the specific section in the article/blog.
I don't care if it's a hundred pages. As long as I embed the knowledge by studying, writing, doing and then reiterating it via such a blog, then It's worth it's time in gold. If someone can benefit from it too, good.
Should it be noticed and people state that it helps them, and they want more, then you can consider putting in more quality time, polishing it and monetizing the stuff, and if so, doing it in moderation. As we've agreed, there's a lot of repeated half-baked work out there by both novices and pros where they ask money for it. Even using other's work, sometimes almost verbatim, or use ChatGPT to create 70-80% of it.
I can go ask "Assistant" myself for free or for a far more efficient spend of my money. Then go verify it from a few other sources and apply it to my tuition.
Thanks again for having my two-cents' and all the best!
Oh i fully agree with all of that.
Stack Overflow is a great resources to search for answers, but the community is toxic as hell.
You get great experienced answers, but don't use the community just google for "something stack overflow" to find what you need.
Don't even bother with Reddit. Small web dev community and toxic as hell too.
Funny enough, Twitter has a really nice and supportive dev community, but all the major players aren't really heavy devs in as much as they are good at writing snippets and things that get likes and shares, at the same time they bring together devs as a community much better. It's a very low experience community though.
Then there's those separate communities like the two you mentioned. I would also recommend LeanWithLeon, the #100devs community who also write a lot here.
A few notes on tutorials by experienced devs. You're right they often don't put things they take for granted into their tutorials. Like everyone assumes you know how to FTP/SSH or how to install Node JS or MySQL.
It would be better if they mentioned that or even linked to other tutorials explaining those.
The arrogance you get from a lot of older devs is something i'm quite familiar with. Hell, i give it out sometimes, or well often, too. So an example on why this happens with me:
For any given problem there are X solutions in dev. There's never just one way of doing something.
So anyone telling you "This is the only way" is really saying "This is the only way i know"
I get a lot of newbies telling me "this is how you have to do X" and me going "nah, there's at least half a dozen other ways to do it, and your way isn't the best, here's what i know works best because i've been doing this a long time"
But sometimes i'm tired, so a newbie says "do it this way" and i just snap "no, that doesn't work, do it this way if you want it to work"...and suddenly, i'm the bad guy. In the dev community everyone's quick to judge and i don't always have the patience to care. I give my opinion freely along with advice as best as i can. That's all i can do.
Thanks for spending your valuable time with this reply, Ravavyr.
I appreciate the confirmation that I'm not the only one smelling the rat in some of these groups and communities. I suppose it also has a ton to do with all the pressure and stress most devs have been and still are under. Especially over the past two years with the pandemic snapping at your heels, while the stay-at-home hackers were having a feast in ripping the net apart from every angle. Forcing even heavier loads on all in the pro-dev arena.
Another thank you for those references to #100Devs and LearningWithLeon. I'm busy checking them out as I'm replying to you.
All the best, and may the sun shine there on your side of this crazy Rock!
I write mine, but it is so hard to be consistent 😴
I know, same here. It's hard to be consistent, but at least try.
I have a really boring style of writing though, that I don't want to bother anyone with. I'm better at commenting 😅
As long as you don't bore yourself, you are good to go. Forget what others might think or say. Write to yourself, Rense.
It gets better when you write :)
I agree 💯 Writing has SO many advantages and when you are also getting paid to write then the passion increases even more.
Thank you for this, I'm new to blogging myself and often hit writer's block brain storming topics. Instead of focusing on theory, I will write about the challenges I've faced as a very new programmer.
Thank you!
I think that's an interesting topic, talking about the challenges while learning programming.
If I solve a difficult problem or figure out something cool I like to write a blog post about it. Hopefully it benefits others
Actually it's a good idea.
You read my mind, thanks for the inspiration. Cheers!
You welcome @akhi1.
Your post was super inspirational and I just finished my first blog post. Thank you!
Thanks and good luck to you. Keep writing.
Exactly! Thank you!
Thank you!
I agree with you, the first reason "Learn faster and improve your technical skills", in my opinion, is the most important one!
Thank you, I agree with you.
Thanks, you welcome!
Agreed!
Good stuff, thanks for this!
my earliest blog was from way back 2004
Counter-point: every other developer should write a blog.
That way we can pair up: one writes the blog, the other reads the blog.
Bagsy reading.
:-D, Good one!
Can I read blogs when I have a blog, too? :)
hmm. this means extra complexity.
We might need to set up locks so that if you're reading you can't write and vice versa, otherwise you might overwrite the blog you're writing with the one you're reading 🤔
Thanks for this post: its like this quote "if you can't explain it simply you don't understand it well enough"
Thank you, that quote is about me 😅
This is true, at least in my opinion it is. Along similar lines, I've heard it said that most programmers eventually become content creators of some sort.
That's true, I agree with you.
Fully agree with everything written here. I personally started my web development and freelancing "career" by starting a blog.
The best way to go about it is just to start writing. You won't be noticed immediately, but over time, if you're consistent, success is almost guaranteed.
At it's best my blog had about 100K visitor per month, but that was after over 2yrs of blogging. Now, after over 4yrs I've built a profitable freelancing business with clients finding me through my blog.
So don't be afraid - start writing, build a habit and stay consistent.
On a side note my recent project is focused exactly on that - headless CMS for technical writing/blogging. It's still in development, but you can check out the LP for more: vrite.io
Hi Arek, I must say the landing page of Vrite is impressive, as is your blog on Revue!
Would you mind sharing more info on the DevOps back-bone, tech stack and internationalization capabilities you plan to have for Vrite, or would there be more information obtainable vie the newsletter subscription to both your Blog and Vrite?
Your feature of using VS Code to help with snippet editing is especially attractive to me.
I'm looking forward to those news letters, and may it all go well with this project!
Hi Andre, thanks for signing up for the waitlist!
Right now Vrite is still in development - I'm targeting February/March for first beta release. The plan is to share more info as we get to the launch.
Regarding the stack - it's all JS/TS right now with Node.js and Mongo on the backend. The plan is to make it a SaaS so, as a user, you won't have to concern yourself with that. Though, there is a chance we'll go open-source too - who knows?
Happy that you're interested in the idea! Thanks!
Thanks for your reply, Arnek. I'm looking forward to your first release. May it go well and as planned!
I completely agree with the points made in this blog post about the benefits of blogging as a software developer.
It's a great way to improve skills, market oneself, document progress, and learn communication and presentation skills.
It's also a chance to express oneself creatively and give back to the community by sharing knowledge and experiences. :)
I highly recommend blogging to other developers!
Well said, Anna! Now we need to get more ladies involved do help continue this momentum.
And if you don't mind sharing more about your knowledge regarding API security, please do. I'm seriously considering using either Wallarm or Gravitee API managers for my current project. If you know about them, what are your thoughts or or counter-options for securing APIs?
Totally agreed! And to hopefully help in this process (since I'm just starting myself too), I also documented how I did it for free: dev.to/costica/hacking-a-zero-cost...
Hey, Costica, I love your DEV blog!
Even thinking about GDPR, eh!? Somebody realises there's more to just coding a website/app. And to top it off, you're a Laravel guy! Now I'm very much interested - Consider yourself Follwed!
Keep it going!
100% I started my blog a little while ago and randomly post articles little how to posts etc. Mainly things that I have forgotten how to do several times or things that I found hard to find the answer via google! It has helped me so much to both remember things and how to express my thoughts !
If you are interested check it out here
Great going and some very handy advice, Alex. I went and read your "why i stopped hosting my blog on aws" post. Quite informative and it ties up with the purpose of Elchin's post very well I think.
Funny thing, I just started writing a document to share what I learned with my coworkers, so I wouldn't have to explain the process myself in case they needed to do that task. Turns out I realized "Hey, this is becoming actually nice. What if I turn this document into an article and publish it online to anyone interested?". I always thought about that but never knew how to start. The "I’m not an expert of anything, not a famous person" also crossed my mind. And, suddenly, I had it right in front of me. I talked to my boss and she thought it was a great idea! Now I'm on my way to publish my first blog post, totally unexpected but very welcome!
These reasons are (or may be) good reasons for starting a blog, but "every" and "should" is nonsense - it completely depends on the person, and what they want to do with their life, and with their time.
Let me repeat and rephrase it:
Blanket statements like "EVERY developer SHOULD write a blog" are nonsense.
I really suggest people to listen to a Seth Godin x Tim Ferriss interview youtube.com/watch?v=XAE46z9wT0A.
TLDR;
If writing is something that you want to get better at or want to share your thoughts with the world, merely write something. Doesn't matter its good or bad. Eventually you will write better and better.
Also it doesn't need to be long articles. Seth Godin has some articles on his blog that are 1-2 paragraphs long -> seths.blog/
I started by writing markdown files in a github repo to stop from spiralling into a dilemma of what platform to use, what framework to use, how to style stuff, should I use medium, devto and on and on.
Agreed with article.
Giving back to the community and self learning were the reasons why I started writing. I feel these resembles with most of us.
In respect to your article even I jotted down few points which might help someone here Perks / Hardships of Becoming A Technical Blogger 2023 | Technical.
Moreover I have even written my first Ebook which will provide users with information on Multiple Practical Ways to Start as a Technology Blogger.
Ebook Link: apoorvtomar2222.gumroad.com/l/trtax
Great thoughts.
Ultimately, whether or not you should write a blog depends on your personal goals and interests. If you enjoy writing and want to share your knowledge with others, then blogging might be a good option for you. However, if you do not enjoy writing or do not have the time to commit to it, then it may not be the right choice for you.
Hi Elchin, Great post. It chimes with a recent post of mine Why I write posts on dev.to and you should too.
Thanks @nasirovelchin for the motivation of "Every Software Developer should write a blog". Yes, I've quoted it verbatim because some think in negatives: "NOT Every Software Developer should write a blog"
A great read and may it motivate more beginners in the dev world to do so. Hell, it's the best way to learn! Ed-101 stuff!
Good post. Just one thing, every part of the post title should be hightlighted more with a title tag. Is just a small patch and makes it easier to read.
Thank you very much. You motivated me to continue writing on my blog i've just built. beingdev.online
Knowledge is the only thing which gets bigger when you give
How do I know what I think, until I write it down?
Totally agree with all the points shared and it did helped a lot when you are writing a blog, you give yourself a chance to explore something new and always get to learning something extra.
Couldn't agree more.
The first step is the hardest. I will try my best to do it!
Do you guys know which is the best option to make a blog? Like I had bluehost with wordpress, but tbh, I never liked it. It's kind of messy or uncomfortable. Are there any other options?
Hey there! If you're looking for a great platform to start blogging on, I'd definitely recommend checking out dev.to. Not only is it a great community for developers and tech professionals, but it's also a very user-friendly platform for publishing content. In fact, I've had a great experience publishing articles on dev.to myself - you can check out my blog page here: dev.to/ricovz. Give it a try and see if you like it!