“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”
― Terry Pratchett
One often undervalued aspect in Software development is Writing. Technical Writing is much more complicated than coding at times. When I started Software Development, I always thought documentation is an exercise in futile. The code is either easy to understand for anyone and if not completely non understandable for anyone. In my first job, we were exploring and learning an ERP platform. The company gave me enough freedom to spend time on research and make sure I completely understand the Product.
Probably 6 months in to the job, I had written a personal blog on something that I don't remember now. Reading through that, my boss suggested I should try my hand at Blogging about the platform we were working on and the challenges we were facing on it. I thought this was a simple exercise. Only as I started writing my first blog post did I realize that I did not know much about the functionality I was going to blog about. The thing with mind is sometimes it's way more powerful than what we give credit for. It knows that you are a troubled soul and many times to keep you at peace, it gives you a false impression that you have understood things even though the truth could be otherwise. The same dawned on me that day.
My first blog post is in this blog and now 121 posts later, I am still amazed how far I went in a short span of time. From May 2010 till May 2011, I remember going crazy and writing almost 2-3 blog posts a week. It's not much by current standards, but with my work, even to manage that time is more surprising to me.
The reason for this blog post now is because, I was looking back at the fact that, it is this very blog that had got me my last 2 jobs and still makes me feel good about myself when someone references my blogs during development. To those devs, who are starting out now and even to those who can't write to save their life, use this opportunity to remind yourself that more you learn to write about your developments, the more you will understand and the more you can share with the community.
I am planning to write more blogs henceforth on generic topics related to Software Development and if you want any specific topic addressed, please do let me know.
Happy coding...
P.S : I have published the same in my personal blog as well here.
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