Let me guess. You've thought about starting a blog at least once. Maybe you even created a Medium account, picked a domain name, or installed Jekyll on your laptop. Then you looked at the blank screen and thought, "What's the point? Smarter people have already written about this. My English isn't perfect. Nobody's going to read it anyway."
So you closed the tab and went back to coding.
I get it. I spent three years making the same excuses before I published my first technical blog post. And when I finally did publish something, it was a mediocre 400-word tutorial on CSS flexbox that probably helped exactly five people. But that post changed my career in ways I didn't expect.
This isn't going to be another feel-good article telling you that "sharing is caring" or that you should blog because it's "good for the community." Those things might be true, but they're not why you should care. You should care because blogging makes you a better developer, opens doors you didn't know existed, and compounds your career growth in ways that writing code alone never will.
And no, you don't need to be a "good writer." You just need to stop overthinking it.
What Most Developers Get Wrong About Blogging
Here's the first misconception: you think blogging is about writing.
It's not.
Blogging for developers is about thinking clearly, organizing knowledge, and proving you can solve problems. The writing is just the delivery mechanism. When you write about how you debugged a tricky React re-render issue, you're not trying to be David Sedaris. You're documenting your problem-solving process in a way that's useful to your future self and anyone else who Googles that error message at 2 AM.
The second misconception is that blogs need to be original or groundbreaking. They don't. Think about how many times you've read a Stack Overflow answer or a blog post about something basic like "how to center a div" or "understanding JavaScript closures." These topics have been covered thousands of times, but you still clicked on that particular post because the way that person explained it finally made sense to you.
Your perspective matters because you understand things the way you understand them, and that explanation might be exactly what someone else needs to hear.
The third misconception is that you need to be an expert before you can write. This is backwards. You become an expert by writing. When you force yourself to explain something publicly, you find the gaps in your understanding real fast. You can't hide behind vague handwaving when you're writing. Either you know it or you don't, and the writing process exposes that.
The Real Reason Blogging Makes You a Better Developer
Writing about code forces you to understand it differently than just making it work.
When you're coding normally, you can get away with pattern matching and copying solutions that work even if you don't fully understand why. You've done it. I've done it. Everyone has copied a regex from Stack Overflow without understanding what all those characters do. And that's fine for getting stuff done.
But when you sit down to write "How to Validate Email Addresses in JavaScript," you can't just paste a regex and move on. You have to explain why that pattern works. You have to break it down. And in breaking it down for someone else, you finally understand it yourself.
This is learning by teaching, and it's one of the most effective ways to actually retain technical knowledge instead of constantly re-googling the same things.
Let me give you a concrete example. I spent two weeks fighting with webpack configuration on a project. I finally got it working, felt relieved, and moved on. Six months later, I needed to set up webpack again and couldn't remember what I'd done. I wasted another afternoon relearning the same concepts.
After that happened twice, I wrote a blog post called "Webpack Config for React Apps: What Each Line Actually Does." That post took me about three hours to write. I haven't had to re-google webpack basics since, and that post has probably saved me ten or fifteen hours of searching over the years. Plus, it's helped other developers based on the comments and messages I've gotten.
That's the selfish reason to blog, and it's perfectly valid: you're creating documentation for your future self.
How Blogging Improves Your Debugging Skills
This might sound strange, but explaining problems in writing makes you better at solving them.
When you're stuck on a bug and you decide to write about it—even if you're just drafting a post you might publish later—something happens. The act of describing the problem, what you've tried, and what the symptoms are forces you to organize your thinking. You start to see patterns or realize you made an assumption that turned out to be wrong.
Developers talk about "rubber duck debugging" where you explain your code to a rubber duck and somehow figure out the bug in the process. Blogging is rubber duck debugging on steroids. You're explaining it to potentially thousands of people, which makes you think even more carefully about whether your explanation actually makes sense.
I've lost count of how many times I've started writing a blog post about a problem I was facing, gotten halfway through describing my solution, realized my solution was wrong, fixed it, then finished the post with the correct approach. The writing process itself is a debugging tool.
And here's the thing: you can publish those posts even if you solved the problem wrong at first. "How I Spent Two Days Debugging a React Performance Issue (And What I Learned)" is a great post. It shows your thinking process, the wrong turns you took, and what finally worked. That's more valuable than a polished tutorial that makes everything look easy.
The Career Benefits Nobody Talks About
Let's talk about what blogging actually does for your career, not in abstract terms, but in concrete outcomes I've seen happen to myself and other developers.
You Stand Out in Job Applications
Hiring managers look at hundreds of resumes. Most of them say the same thing: "Proficient in React, Node.js, and PostgreSQL. Built scalable web applications. Team player." Cool. So did everyone else.
Now imagine a resume that includes a link to a blog where you've written about:
- How you optimized a slow database query and reduced response time by 70%
- Your thought process for choosing between different state management solutions
- A deep dive into how you debugged a memory leak in production
That blog demonstrates things a resume can't: how you think, how you communicate, and that you care enough about your craft to write about it. I've interviewed dozens of developers, and the ones with blogs always get more attention. Always. Even if the blog isn't particularly popular or polished.
One of my former colleagues got hired at a company specifically because the CTO read his blog post about designing a caching layer. The post had maybe 50 views, but one of those views was from someone who could hire him. That's all it takes.
You Build Proof of Knowledge
Anyone can put "Expert in TypeScript" on their LinkedIn. But if you've written a 2000-word post explaining TypeScript's type system with practical examples, that's proof. It's much harder to fake.
This matters especially for self-taught developers or people transitioning into tech. You don't have a computer science degree to point to as credibility. Your blog becomes your credentials. I've seen self-taught developers get hired over candidates with CS degrees because their blog showed they could think deeply about technical problems.
You Improve at Explaining Technical Concepts
This seems obvious, but it's worth emphasizing: developers who can explain things clearly are more valuable than developers who can't.
When you've written blog posts explaining technical concepts, you get better at explaining things in code reviews, in meetings with non-technical stakeholders, in documentation, in team discussions. You develop a mental library of analogies and explanations that work.
I work with a senior developer who's brilliant but can't explain anything without getting lost in technical jargon that nobody else understands. He's frustrated because he doesn't get promoted to lead positions, but communication is half of those roles. If he'd spent time blogging, he would have practiced explaining things in ways people could actually follow.
You Create Long-Term Passive Value
This is the part that most developers underestimate.
When you write a good technical blog post, it works for you forever. I have posts I wrote four years ago that still get traffic every single day. They answer questions on Google, they get shared in Slack channels, they show up when people search for specific problems.
Some of those posts have led to:
- Freelance opportunities from people who found my blog
- Job interview requests
- Speaking invitations
- People reaching out just to say thanks, which led to valuable professional relationships
And I didn't do anything special. I just wrote practical posts about problems I'd solved.
Compare that to your code. The code you write usually lives in private repositories or gets rewritten in a few years. Nobody outside your company sees it. It doesn't build your reputation or open doors. It's valuable, obviously, but it doesn't compound the way blog posts do.
You Build Authority in Your Niche
Let's say you work a lot with PostgreSQL. You start writing about Postgres performance, query optimization, indexing strategies, database design decisions. After a year, you have fifteen solid posts on the topic.
Now when people search for PostgreSQL help, they might find your name multiple times. They start to recognize you. You become "that Postgres person." This has real career value. Companies that need Postgres expertise start to take notice. Recruiters reach out. Other developers ask you questions, which leads to more post ideas.
You don't need a million followers. You just need to be known by a small group of people in your specific area of expertise. That's enough to open doors.
I know a developer who wrote extensively about Vue.js composition API when it was new. She became known in the Vue community, got invited to speak at conferences, and eventually got hired by a company specifically because they needed someone who understood that feature deeply. Her blog built that reputation.
The Technical Benefits Are Real
Beyond career stuff, blogging makes you better at the actual craft of software development.
You Learn Faster
When you read a tutorial or documentation, you might understand it well enough to use it. But when you write about it, you have to understand it well enough to teach it. That's a higher bar.
This accelerates learning because you can't move on until you really get it. I've probably learned more from writing blog posts than from any online course I've taken, because writing forces active engagement with the material.
Here's how it works in practice: you're learning a new technology, let's say Docker. You can follow a tutorial, get your container running, and feel accomplished. Or you can write a blog post called "Docker for JavaScript Developers: What I Wish I Knew Starting Out."
To write that post, you need to:
- Understand not just what to do, but why
- Anticipate questions readers might have
- Test your examples to make sure they work
- Organize the information in a logical flow
- Explain the mental model behind Docker, not just the commands
By the time you finish that post, you understand Docker at a much deeper level than just following tutorials.
You Build a Personal Knowledge Base
Your blog becomes your external brain.
I reference my own blog posts constantly. When I need to remember how I set up a CI/CD pipeline, or how I structured a particular API, or what that weird Git command was, I just search my own blog. It's faster than digging through old projects or searching Stack Overflow.
This is especially valuable for things you do occasionally but not regularly. Authentication implementation, database migrations, deployment configurations—stuff you might do once every few months. Instead of relearning it each time, you have your own step-by-step guide waiting for you.
Some developers keep private notes for this. That's fine, but there's extra value in making those notes public because:
- It forces you to make them more complete and clear
- Other people might point out better ways to do things in the comments
- You help others who have the same problem
You Develop Better Mental Models
Writing forces you to build coherent mental models of how things work.
When you're just coding, you can get by with a fragmented understanding. You know authentication works, you know Redux manages state, you know SQL joins combine tables, but maybe you couldn't explain the underlying principles if someone asked.
Writing makes those principles explicit. You can't write a post about SQL joins without developing a clear mental model of how they work. And once you have that mental model, you can apply it to new situations more easily.
I see this all the time with developers who claim they "understand" a concept but can't explain it clearly. The inability to explain it clearly is usually a sign they don't understand it as well as they think. Writing reveals that gap.
Addressing the Real Fears
Let's tackle the actual reasons developers don't blog, because they're legitimate concerns even if they're not good excuses.
"I'm Not Good Enough to Write"
This is the most common fear, and it's based on a flawed assumption.
You think you need to be an expert to write about something. But experts are often the worst people to explain things to beginners because they've forgotten what it's like not to know. They skip steps that seem obvious to them but aren't obvious to someone learning.
You know what makes you qualified to write about learning React? Learning React. That recent struggle is exactly what makes your perspective valuable. You remember what confused you, what clicked, what resources were helpful and which ones weren't.
I learned this when I wrote a post about understanding JavaScript promises. I'm not a JavaScript expert. There are people who know the language far better than me. But my post got way more engagement than some "expert" posts on the same topic because I wrote it while the learning was fresh. I remembered exactly where I got stuck and addressed those sticking points directly.
Write from where you are, not from where you think you should be.
"Everything Has Already Been Written"
This is technically true and completely irrelevant.
Yes, someone has written about React hooks before. Probably hundreds of people. So what? Those people aren't you. They didn't learn it the way you learned it, they didn't struggle with the same things you struggled with, and they didn't explain it the way you would explain it.
Think about cooking recipes. There are ten thousand recipes for chocolate chip cookies on the internet. Do people stop posting new ones? No, because everyone has a slightly different approach, and different people connect with different explanations.
The same is true for technical content. Your explanation of closures might finally be the one that makes it click for someone, even though fifty other explanations didn't work for them.
Plus, the act of writing benefits you regardless of whether it's been written before. Remember, blogging is selfish. You're learning by writing. Who cares if someone else wrote about it first?
"No One Will Read It"
Probably not many people, at least at first. And that's fine.
Your first blog post might get five views. Three of them might be you checking to see if anyone read it. This is normal and not a reason to stop.
You're not trying to go viral. You're building a body of work over time. Each post adds to your knowledge base, your portfolio, your Google presence. Some posts will get more traction than others, and you can't predict which ones.
I have posts I thought were brilliant that got almost no views, and posts I thought were basic that ended up being my most popular. You can't predict what will resonate.
Also, you don't need thousands of readers to get value from blogging. If your post helps ten people, that's ten people who benefited from something you shared. If it helps you six months from now when you need to reference it, that's a win.
One thoughtful reader who reaches out to say your post helped them is worth more than ten thousand anonymous pageviews.
"My English Isn't Good Enough"
This fear affects a lot of non-native English speakers, and I want to be clear: your English is probably better than you think, and it definitely doesn't need to be perfect.
Technical blogs aren't literary fiction. Readers aren't looking for beautiful prose. They're looking for clear explanations of technical problems. If your English is good enough to work as a developer, it's good enough to blog.
Some of the best technical bloggers I follow are non-native English speakers. Their posts sometimes have grammar mistakes, but the technical content is solid and that's what matters. I've never seen someone dismiss a helpful technical post because of grammar issues.
If you're really worried about it, you can:
- Use Grammarly or similar tools to catch obvious mistakes
- Keep sentences shorter and simpler
- Focus on clarity over style
- Have someone proofread if it makes you feel better
But honestly, just publish it. The value is in the technical content, not the language polish.
"I Don't Have Time"
This one is partially legitimate because we're all busy. But let's be honest: you have time. You're choosing not to prioritize it.
You don't need to write 3000-word posts every week. You can write a 500-word post once a month. That's a few hours of work that fits into most schedules.
The developers who say they don't have time are often the same ones who spend hours scrolling Twitter or watching YouTube tutorials. I'm not judging—I do those things too—but it's about priorities, not time availability.
If you want to start blogging but genuinely have limited time, start small:
- Write one short post per month
- Aim for 300-500 words
- Focus on a single concept or problem you solved
- Don't worry about making it perfect
Something published is infinitely more valuable than something you're still planning to write when you "have time."
The Hard Truths About Not Blogging
Let me be blunt about what you're giving up by not blogging.
You're making yourself less visible in a field where visibility matters. Two developers with equal skills, but one has a blog and one doesn't—the one with the blog gets more opportunities. They get noticed more easily. They build credibility faster.
You're learning slower than you could be. Writing is thinking, and thinking is learning. By not writing, you're settling for surface-level understanding when you could have deeper comprehension.
You're losing out on passive career growth. The time you spend blogging compounds. Posts you write today can open doors years from now. Code you write today gets rewritten or forgotten. That's just the reality.
You're making it harder to stand out. The job market is competitive. Every advantage matters. A blog is an advantage that most developers don't have, which means it makes you stand out more than you might expect.
You're relying entirely on your current network for opportunities. Blogs expand your network beyond the people you already know. They let strangers discover you. That's powerful.
And here's maybe the most important one: you're making it harder on your future self.
Future you will face problems current you is solving right now. If you document those solutions, future you says thanks. If you don't, future you wastes time re-solving the same problems.
What to Actually Write About
The hardest part for most developers is figuring out what to write. You think you need some groundbreaking insight or unique expertise. You don't.
Here are specific things you can write about right now:
Problems you just solved. This is the easiest and most valuable type of post. You spent three hours debugging why your CSS Grid layout was breaking on mobile? Write about what the problem was, what you tried, and what finally worked. Even if the solution seems obvious in retrospect, it wasn't obvious when you were stuck.
Things you just learned. Wrote your first SQL query? Write about what was confusing and what helped it make sense. Just finished a tutorial on GraphQL? Write about what you learned and whether the tutorial was good.
Tools or libraries you use. Write about your development environment, your favorite VS Code extensions, how you've set up your debugging workflow. Other developers are always curious about how people set things up.
Comparisons and decisions. When should you use Redux vs Context API? How do you choose between MySQL and PostgreSQL? These don't require deep expertise, just research and thoughtful comparison.
Your learning process. Write about how you're learning a new framework or language. Document your progress over weeks or months. People relate to the learning journey.
Beginner explanations. Explain concepts you struggled with in a way that would have helped you when you were learning. "JavaScript Closures Explained Like I'm Five" type posts.
Mistakes and failures. Write about what went wrong. "How I Accidentally Deleted Our Production Database" gets more engagement than "How to Perfectly Configure Your Database" because people learn more from failures.
Weekly TIL (Today I Learned) posts. Just a short post about one thing you learned that week. Could be a keyboard shortcut, a Git command, a CSS property you didn't know about.
Book or course reviews. Write about technical books or courses you've completed. What was valuable? What wasn't? Would you recommend it?
Your first project. Write about building your first project in a new technology. What challenges did you face? What resources helped?
The pattern here is that you don't need to know everything about a topic to write about it. You just need to know more than you did yesterday.
How to Structure a Technical Post
You don't need a fancy structure, but having some basic organization helps.
Here's a simple template that works for most technical posts:
Start with the problem or question. What are you solving or explaining? Why does it matter?
Give context if needed. What should readers know before diving in? What assumptions are you making?
Explain your solution or approach. Walk through the steps, the code, the reasoning. Use code examples that actually run.
Show the result. What does the working solution look like? Include screenshots or output if relevant.
Discuss tradeoffs or alternatives. What are the downsides? When might this approach not work? What else did you consider?
Wrap up with key takeaways. What should readers remember? What might they want to explore further?
That's it. You don't need an elaborate structure. Clear, logical flow is all that matters.
Practical Writing Tips
Some concrete advice for the actual writing process:
Write how you talk. Don't try to sound formal or academic. Write like you're explaining something to a colleague over coffee. This makes your writing more readable and helps you actually finish posts instead of getting stuck trying to sound smart.
Use code examples that work. Nothing is more frustrating than a technical post with code that doesn't run. Test your examples. Make sure they're complete enough to actually use.
Break up walls of text. Use subheadings, short paragraphs, code blocks, lists. Make it scannable. People skim technical content before deciding to read it carefully.
Link to resources. If you reference a library, tool, or another post, link to it. This helps readers and shows you did your research.
Start with an outline. Don't just start writing and hope it comes together. Spend ten minutes outlining what you want to cover. This makes the actual writing much faster.
Don't worry about length. Some posts are 500 words. Some are 3000. Write as much as you need to explain the topic well, then stop.
Edit before publishing, but don't over-edit. Read through once to catch obvious mistakes and make sure it flows. Don't spend hours agonizing over every word. Done is better than perfect.
Add a TL;DR if it's long. A quick summary at the top helps readers decide if they want to read the whole thing.
Use simple words. You're not trying to impress anyone with vocabulary. You're trying to be understood. Simple and clear beats complex and clever.
How Often Should You Publish?
There's no magic number, but here's what's realistic:
Once a month is enough to build momentum. This is sustainable for most developers while still building up a body of work over time.
Twice a month is better if you can manage it. More content means more chances for something to resonate, but don't burn out trying to maintain this pace.
Once a week is ambitious and probably not sustainable long-term unless you're really committed or it's part of your job.
Less than once a month and you'll lose momentum. It's hard to build an audience or a habit if you're posting every few months.
The key is consistency over frequency. Better to post once a month reliably than to post three times one month and then nothing for four months.
Also, it's okay to take breaks. If you need to skip a month because life got busy, that's fine. Just don't let one skip turn into quitting entirely.
Where to Publish
You have options, and each has tradeoffs.
Your own blog (self-hosted or platform like Ghost):
Pros: You own it completely. You control the design. No platform can shut you down. You can add whatever features you want. It looks more professional.
Cons: You have to deal with hosting, setup, maintenance. No built-in audience. You need to drive traffic yourself.
Dev.to:
Pros: Built-in audience of developers. Simple interface. Free. Easy to get started. Good community features and discussions.
Cons: Less control over design. Your content lives on someone else's platform. Can feel less "professional" for established developers.
Medium:
Pros: Clean design. Potential for wider reach. Easy to use. Can join publications to get more distribution.
Cons: Paywall can limit reach. Less developer-focused. Platform has changed policies before and might again.
Hashnode:
Pros: Developer-focused. You can use your own domain. Free. Nice features for technical content. Built-in community.
Cons: Smaller audience than Dev.to or Medium. Less well-known outside developer circles.
Personal site + cross-posting:
Pros: Best of both worlds. You own the canonical version on your site, but you cross-post to platforms for reach.
Cons: More work to maintain. Need to handle canonical URLs properly to avoid SEO issues.
My recommendation: Start with Dev.to or Hashnode to remove friction. Get a few posts published and see if you stick with it. If you do, then invest time in setting up your own blog and cross-posting. Don't let the decision of where to publish stop you from publishing.
The platform matters way less than actually writing.
How to Actually Start (Actionable Steps)
Okay, you're convinced. Now what?
Right now, today:
Pick your platform. I'm serious. Go to Dev.to or Hashnode, create an account. Takes two minutes. Don't overthink it.
This week:
Write your first post. Not a masterpiece. Just something. Here are easy first post ideas:
- "What I Learned Building My First [Project Type]"
- "5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Learning [Technology]"
- "How I Solved [Specific Error or Bug]"
- "My Development Environment Setup"
Aim for 500-1000 words. Use this simple outline:
- What I was trying to do
- What problem I ran into or what I learned
- How I solved it or what I discovered
- Key takeaways
Write it in one sitting if you can. Don't edit as you write. Just get the ideas down.
After you finish:
Read it once. Fix obvious mistakes. Make sure code examples work. Then publish it. Don't wait for it to be perfect.
Then:
Post it in relevant communities (subreddits, Discord servers, Twitter, wherever developers in your niche hang out). Don't spam, just share it as something you wrote that might help others.
Next month:
Write another post. Pick another recent problem you solved or thing you learned.
Repeat for six months.
At that point, you'll have six posts. That's enough to start seeing benefits. You'll have a small portfolio of your thinking, some posts might be getting traffic, and you'll have developed the habit.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Learn from the mistakes other developers (including me) have made:
Trying to make the first post perfect. It won't be. It doesn't need to be. Publish it and move on.
Writing about things you don't understand. You don't need to be an expert, but you should actually understand what you're writing about. Don't just regurgitate tutorials.
Giving up after low initial traffic. Of course your first post doesn't get much traffic. Keep going. It takes time to build an audience.
Not publishing because it's "been done before." Everything has been done before. Do it anyway.
Worrying too much about SEO. Basic SEO is fine (decent titles, relevant keywords naturally included), but don't obsess over it. Good content gets found eventually.
Not including working code examples. If you're showing code, make sure it actually runs. Test it.
Apologizing in your posts. Don't start with "I'm not an expert but..." Just write the post. Let readers decide if it's useful.
Not engaging with comments. When people comment on your posts, respond. It builds community and often leads to interesting discussions or better understanding.
Comparing yourself to popular bloggers. They've been doing this for years. You're just starting. Comparison is pointless.
Waiting for inspiration. You don't need inspiration. You need discipline. Pick a topic and write about it whether you feel inspired or not.
What Success Actually Looks Like
Let's set realistic expectations.
Success isn't going viral or getting thousands of followers. Success is:
- Writing regularly and improving over time
- Having a reference to point to when someone asks how to solve a problem
- Getting one thoughtful comment from someone your post helped
- Finding your own posts useful six months later
- Being more confident explaining technical concepts
- Having something to show in job interviews beyond a resume
- Building a body of work that compounds over years
I've been blogging inconsistently for about four years. I have maybe forty posts total. Some get a few hundred views. Some get a few dozen. One post about debugging CSS Grid inexplicably gets steady traffic and has been found by people who later hired me for consulting work.
That's success. Not fame, not influence, just steady value compounding over time.
The Long-Term Game
Here's what most developers don't understand about blogging: the benefits are heavily back-loaded.
Your first post probably won't do much. Neither will your fifth. But by your twentieth post, you've got a decent body of work to point to. By your fortieth, you're starting to rank for search terms. By your sixtieth, you're becoming known for a specific topic or approach.
This is why consistency matters more than intensity. One post a month for three years beats posting every day for two months and then quitting.
And the benefits keep accumulating. I still get value from posts I wrote years ago. They bring in traffic, they come up in interviews, they lead to opportunities. That time investment keeps paying dividends.
Compare that to most things developers do for career growth. You finish an online course and get a certificate—okay, now what? The course is done, the value is captured. A blog post lives forever and keeps working for you.
Why This Matters More Than You Think
The tech industry is noisy. There are millions of developers. Competition for good jobs is real. Standing out matters.
Most developers are invisible. They write good code, they do their job, and that's it. Nobody outside their company knows who they are or what they can do.
A blog changes that. It gives you visibility. It gives you a voice. It makes you discoverable.
And as AI tools get better at writing code, the differentiator between developers will increasingly be the ability to think clearly about problems and communicate effectively. Blogging develops both of those skills.
The developers who can't explain their thinking, who can't write clear documentation, who can't communicate their value—they're going to struggle. The developers who can do those things will thrive.
Blogging is practice for all of that.
For the Developers Who Still Think They Hate Writing
I get it. You got into coding because you like building things, not writing about them. Writing feels like homework. It's slow. It's painful. You'd rather just code.
But here's the thing: you already write all the time. You write commit messages, code comments, documentation, pull request descriptions, Slack messages to your team, emails explaining technical decisions. You just don't think of those as "writing."
Blogging is just a longer version of explaining something technical in writing, which you already do. The only difference is the audience.
And the writing gets easier with practice. Your first post will probably take you four hours and feel like pulling teeth. Your tenth post might take two hours and feel more natural. By your twentieth, you can bang out a solid 1000-word post in an hour or so.
The difficulty isn't fixed. It decreases as you do it more.
Also, you don't have to write like a "writer." You can write like a developer. Short sentences. Code examples. Clear structure. Get to the point. That's perfectly fine and often more effective than trying to sound literary.
A Final Push
You've read this far, which means you're at least curious about blogging. Maybe you're convinced. Maybe you're still skeptical but willing to consider it.
Here's my challenge: write one blog post this month.
Not a great one. Not a comprehensive one. Just one post about something you learned or solved recently. Publish it somewhere. Dev.to, Medium, your own site, wherever. Just get it out there.
See how it feels. See if anyone finds it useful. See if the process of writing helps you understand the topic better.
If you hate it, fine. You gave it a shot. But I'm betting you won't hate it as much as you think you will.
And if you do it once and it goes okay, do it again next month. And the month after that. After six months, you'll have six posts and a much better sense of whether this is valuable for you.
Most developers never start. They think about it, they make excuses, they wait for the perfect time or the perfect topic or the perfect platform. None of those exist.
The developers who get the benefits from blogging are the ones who just start, even when it's awkward and uncertain and their first posts aren't very good.
You don't need permission. You don't need credentials. You don't need to be a great writer.
You just need to write one post and publish it.
Everything else follows from that.
Top comments (3)
Nice to see the "Written by a Human" badges in use here! Glad my use of them might have inspired others - it’s a fun way to highlight posts that are fully human-written and share personal experience or perspective.”
Wow, wow… such a long post and with a tag "Written by Human" actually, every word feels genuinely human. Excellent work you actually motivated me to write this comment...
I started blogging years ago but I didn’t write much for the exact same reasons you discussed here. A few months ago, something clicked for me. Now I write for my future self keeping my younger self in mind so that even if it helps no one else it’s still useful to me. And hopefully, it also helps people at a similar experience level. :)
This is a great in depth post about why blogging is important. I recently start to document my journey because I want to solidify my understanding as well as receiving feedback from others that are in a similar field as me! This shows the benefits of blogging when it comes to careers as well as "exposing" yourself what you are capable of! Great post!