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Why you should have a programming blog
- M8 11y agoNot persuaded.
- fredsted 11y agoWrite a blog article about why!
- izolate 11y agoDisagree. I have nothing to say that I don't already say via twitter, on github (repos, gists), comments on HN/reddit/blogs. I already have all these tools at my disposal to impart my knowledge. I find blogs too self-indulgent.
- fastball 11y agoIf someone googles a question about programming, the top results are probably not going to be your github repos, your twitter tweets, or your comments on various sites. The top result will probably be Stack Overflow (for small questions) or a blog post (for the more comprehensive ones). It seems to me that if "helping others" is the goal, your method of sharing is much more self-indulgent than a blog. Also who imparts actual programming knowledge with their tweets? You find a way past the character limit? That must be one of the sillier things I've heard on here in a long time.
- sensationaltru 11y agoAs long as Google keeps it this way :)
- izolate 11y agoYour imagination is failing you. Twitter is an excellent medium to share links to tools with others who may find them useful. An example from today: https://twitter.com/izolate/status/596262146553597952 https://twitter.com/izolate/status/596262146553597952
- biot 11y agoTo play devil's advocate, this is little more than a recipe to be followed by rote. I didn't learn anything in that gist other than a clever way to find the version number. Why does it get installed into my home directory... is that suitable for a production server? And so on...
- swalsh 11y agoThat tweet is too compressed to be googled effectively. The difficulty in internet searching is finding how to describe the problem effectively. Just yesterday I was doing research on algorithms for a graph traversal problem. Since my knowledge on graph theory is pretty low, googling was more of a hierarchy. First I had to google the words I needed to know before I could search effectively for a solution.
- fastball 11y agoYeah, but you are not imparting actual knowledge through the tweets. You are sharing a link to where knowledge can be found. You could also share a link to, you know, a blog. And you are certainly not growing as a developer by tweeting that, where as the author of the article made the claim that having a blog will develop you as a programmer.
- Grue3 11y agoHow is this any better than the direct link to gist? Why did I have to click and load the (terribly bloated) Twitter website just to see nothing but a link to another another resource. That's like when you're looking up a word in a dictionary and once you find it, you're told to look up another word. A waste of time.
- eertami 11y agoI'd happily read a blog post but I'll never ever browse to any twitter feed.
- mdemare 11y agoSuppose there are 10M programmers worldwide. Should there be 10M programming blogs?
- fastball 11y agoWhy not? If we were manually filtering all these blogs, then of course not. But we're not. We have google. It doesn't matter how many blogs there are as long as you are not re-hashing solved problems that have been explained thoroughly.
- normloman 11y agoI don't think the point has to do with good blogs getting lost in the noise. I think the point is, if every programmer had a blog, how many of them would be any good, and how many would actually get read?
- fastball 11y agoWell, considering the first (and IMAO foremost) reason for having a blog was for self-learning, I'd say people actually reading the blogs is secondary - a happy bonus.
- vonmoltke 11y agoIf people reading posts is a "happy bonus", why make anything public? I do shitloads of self-learning, but I don't publicize the vast majority of it. The primary purpose of publishing material to a wider audience should have something to do with said audience. It could be publicizing yourself. It could be a desire to help people. It could be simple narcissism. Whatever the reason, it drives the decision to publish rather than keep the material as simply a personal journal.
- fastball 11y agoBecause as the author of the article stated, learning by "teaching others" is one of the best ways to learn.
- RobSis 11y agoI do have a blog, but I only post when I have something to say to the subject - something that wasn't already said elsewhere. Otherwise I'd consider it just waste of space...
- lamacase 11y agoI don't particularly like the blog format. The central organizational feature of a blog is a timeline. The idea that something you said is "older" than some other thing is not a particularly useful relationship. Though you would probably like to hear if a particular idea had been updated. I think something closer to a personal wiki would be better. All links to entries would be versioned so external links always point to the content they intended, but the entry would contain a link to an updated version if it exists. I think having a medium where people tend to curate their content, rather than forgetting about it and moving on, would lead to higher quality content over time.
- hnarn 11y agoFrom reading the comments here, I keep thinking Stackexchange. A lot of people don't use SE this way, but it's possible to ask a question and right away answer it yourself, before submitting even. I do this sometimes when I learn something. Let the upvotes speak and mark the answer as "wiki" to make sure it's future-proof, so others can update outdated/bad info.
- dmart 11y agoI agree. Blogs were designed to be "web logs", after all, and I think in a lot of cases trying to shoehorn technical writing into a blog's inherently journal-like format is a bad idea. I much prefer it when people simply maintain a "writing" page with articles grouped by topic rather than their (rather arbitrary) age.
- jerf 11y ago"I think something closer to a personal wiki would be better. All links to entries would be versioned so external links always point to the content they intended, but the entry would contain a link to an updated version if it exists." I haven't seen a great implementation of this idea that also has a decent timeline view that people can subscribe to. Of course, if you don't care about people subscribing, then no problem, but if you are interested in that sort of relationship with people some "subscribable" is a necessity. I've fiddled with trying to synthesize the timeline quasi-manually (think the space some wikis give you to say what a change is at the bottom), along with a checkbox that indicates the "minor change" ("don't put in the RSS feed"), but it's definitely something that only a handful of people are going to do because it's enough work to maintain one view of your content, maintaining two is even more.
- kpcyrd 11y agoIf everybody, regardless of their skill level, is writing a blog, we'll end up with a lot of new tutorials how to build yet another insecure fileupload or bypassable .htaccess files.
- Killswitch 11y agoOne of my biggest pet peeves is these blogs that do things like "Getting started with Express.js" and they cover HALF of what the Getting Started docs on Express' website offers.
- revskill 11y agoYou should change the title to: Why you should have a fast programming blog. Making reader waiting for the content fully loaded on your blog is really annoying :)
- arikrak 11y agoI'm not sure it makes sense for every person to create their own blog, especially if they're not going to post frequently. Few people will end up reading anything they write. Instead it may make sense to contribute content to another website. This could either be open-source / CC content, or they could be paid for their articles. (Perhaps they could also embed programming challenges in their articles so people can try out what the article discusses...)
- sklogic 11y agoWhy should I contribute to an increasing entropy?
- rimantas 11y agoWhy you just did?
- sklogic 11y agoPrecisely. I'm contributing anyway (by commenting, breathing, farting), so why should I do it even more?
- teach 11y agoBlogging is far preferable to commenting in a public forum because I don't have to see it unless I visit. To use your own analogy: commenting on Reddit/Youtube/HN is like farting in public. Blogging is like farting in your own home.
- sklogic 11y agoThere is a significant nuance: blogs are most likely indexed by google. Comments are invisible. So blogs are generating much more noise, obstructing an access to information much more dramatically than even a 5000-strong comments thread could ever do.
- teach 11y agoComments are most certainly indexed by Google. They are not usually ranked highly. And crappy blogs are also indexed and not ranked very highly. Both generate comparable "noise", except that there are a lot more comments.
- sklogic 11y agoThen why, when I search for a solution to a specific problem (e.g., googling for an error message, etc.), I most likely land in some blog full of ramblings with no solution whatsoever? And often the real solution is hidden somewhere in comments on SE, never listed in any sane google query.
- Two9A 11y agoSo what happens if you have a blog but can't find the time to write to the level of detail you'd like? I haven't had a chance to write a thing since my aborted series on JPEG encoding, two years ago; there are multiple abandoned series lurking in there, waiting for me...
- whoisthemachine 11y agoHave to disagree. If you feel like you have something to say, and you feel like a blog is the right format, then sure, have a blog. But this article feels a lot like one those "self-help" articles that instructs you how to improve your life (Work-out in the morning! Eliminate all sugar from your diet! etc.) In the end, this author has the audacity to say that since something works for him then that necessarily means that everyone else should follow that formula. TL;DR: do you whatever you want to, man. Oh and disclaimer: I have a blog but I rarely post technical insights. It's more or less a way for me to post my creations and occasionally a cool picture or something. http://davidvedvick.info http://davidvedvick.info
- tn6o 11y agoAuthor here, I'm sorry if the article felt that way, that wasn't my intention at all. It's true that it's something that works for me (and probably for other people) but people should obviously do what they want. I still think everyone should give it a try. Maybe it won't work for them but it could be great for others. They won't know until they've tried ;)
- Afforess 11y agoI don't blog because I have found the internet is too hateful, too quick to judge, and too eager to bring torches and pitchforks. I have a quiet, calm, low-stress life and I can not justify giving up those for free, just to share a few thoughts on the internet to others. My mental health is worth more than whatever notoriety I might gain from internet blogging.
- swalsh 11y agoI feel the same way, even if its just one comment out of 20. That one comment can really get to you, and it lowers the mood to a generally negative level. I have a lot of respect for people can blog about "new" ideas on a regular basis. It takes a lot of persistence.
- tn6o 11y agoAuthor here. I totally get you guys. I'm just the same and I actually got a few hate comments (not on HN) about this article. Of course, it makes me sad and I'm thinking about just stopping everything. Why bother? But the next day, I realize there are people who liked it and that makes me want to try again and get better :)
- rdudek 11y agoThe beauty about comments is that if you own the blog, you can moderate them. Having a discussion about why something is wrong is a good thing as long as it does not turn into "I hate your f-ing post" type of deals.
- mparramon 11y agoIf you're going to let the haters stop you from sharing, then they've won. I systematically ignore non-constructive criticism on what I write, and work hard (moderation, deletion, etc) to get rid of it.
- Afforess 11y agoYes, they have won. It is a sad fact, but true.
- lloeki 11y agoNitpick: the Einstein quote is predated by Nicolas Boileau in l'Art Poétique (1674) Avant donc que d'écrire, apprenez à penser. Selon que notre idée est plus ou moins obscure, L'expression la suit, ou moins nette, ou plus pure. Ce que l'on conçoit bien s'énonce clairement, Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément. Translated on the spot (as a futile attempt from a non-native speaker to preserve the poetry of it): Before even to write, one should learn to think. As the idea is more or less obscure Expression follows, 'ther less clear, or more pure. What's best understood is uttered clearly, And those words to tell come that easily. I'm always surprised how much such a work originally applying to art and poetry is also relevant to code. Another example: Hâtez-vous lentement, et sans perdre courage, Vingt fois sur le métier remettez votre ouvrage, Polissez-le sans cesse, et le repolissez, Ajoutez quelquefois, et souvent effacez. T9n: Haste yourself slowly, keep up with bravery, Your work on the bench put again a twenty, Endlessly you polish, and again polish it, Occasionally add, much often delete.
- jackreichert 11y ago> Before even to write, one should learn to think. I personally gain clarity from writing.
- tn6o 11y agoThanks for the reference and nice job on the translation. Pas aussi poétique, mais presque ;)
- steveklabnik 11y agoBest part about having a programming blog: writing a quick post about how you fixed some error, then a year or two later, googling for the error and finding your own blog post on it.
- tn6o 11y agoSo true!
- haberman 11y agoI agree with the idea that one effective way of learning about something you don't understand is to write an article about it. The act of writing it forces you to clarify your understanding to the point that you can explain it to someone else. Here are some articles I wrote where at least 50% of the article consists of things I didn't understand prior to writing the article: http://blog.reverberate.org/2014/09/what-every-computer-programmer-should.html http://blog.reverberate.org/2014/09/what-every-computer-prog... http://blog.reverberate.org/2014/02/react-demystified.html http://blog.reverberate.org/2014/02/react-demystified.html http://blog.reverberate.org/2013/05/deep-wizardry-stack-unwinding.html http://blog.reverberate.org/2013/05/deep-wizardry-stack-unwi...
- Dewie3 11y agoYou could just have your own technical diary so to speak if you don't want to share it with the world.
- swalsh 11y agoI stopped blogging because my skin isn't thick enough. I wrote a post a few times, and several people complemented it each time. But then a few very angry people shredded my ideas to pieces. Emotionally it really bummed me out, so I deleted it.
- vanessa98 11y agoA rails blog doesn't seem like a great soapbox to stand on here.
- philh 11y agoPlease don't maintain a blog just to improve your job prospects. Not that I think it won't work. But it's an arms race, it only helps you until everyone else starts doing it as well. The cost of playing along is that everybody who wants a job needs to spend more time doing something they don't care about, and "has a blog" becomes less valuable as a signal to employers. ...besides, I already have a blog, and I don't want to lose that advantage.
- JDiculous 11y agoI agree, but only if you have something interesting or useful to say. And I agree with the comments saying that the blog isn't the best format to convey information since it's sorted by time. I'm in the process of redesigning my blog to sort by subject matter, and separate small code snippets from more in-depth posts. On another note, I wish more programmers wrote about topics other than just technical ones.