Ask HN: My wife is learning to program. Would you read her blog about this?

I think you might want to look at it from a different perspective. Your wife has already decided what to write about, so look at it from the 'who would want to read and why would they want to read about it'.

Much of the HN community are already developers, so is there something in your wife's content we would gain from reading it? What about beginning software developers? Would they want to learn from your wife instead of maybe some more experienced developers?

I don't mean to sound sexist here, but your wife is returning to the workforce after having a child. How many other women are in the same boat, have programmed before, or would like to start? How many of them would relate to your wife's situation, and just need a bit of encouragement?

There are probably other groups as well, that have a similar feeling to undertaking learning to program. Often software engineers can over complicate simple concepts, maybe your wife would make it all more approachable.

Do I think your wife's blog has value? Probably, but the right question is, to who?

Hi you might want to see a previous blog on similar topic, e.g. https://julielearnspython.wordpress.com/

The only "value" I see in that kind of blog is for tools designer, tutorial writers and even language designers.

On the other hand, as it is going to be useful for your wife to write it down, and it costs "nothing" to make it public, just put it there anyway!

I think it could be really interesting. I documented my JS-learning progress on my blog over the years, focusing on making games with a particular engine. Aside from getting lots of good advice from readers, writing down everything I learned each day helped solidify it in my mind. In addition as I progressed my "How I implemented x" type posts ended up actually being useful for other users of the same engine and I still sometimes get emails from people about how my blog has helped them or given them an idea in their own implementation. She should go for it!

In the large blue world, where having an online presence becomes increasingly more important, I don't see why not.

Blog it, tweet it, possibly present it at beginning coder meetups (in my area there are quite a few of these, many specifically for women), put it on the resume.

I also recommend (for anyone) following the path of discovery and delight, versus relying too heavily on conventional wisdom from jaded observers. Enjoy the unexpected, learn and adapt.

If she wants to write, then I don't think the question of whether HN'ers would read her writings really enters into the equation. A journal and pen are as likely appropriate as Posthaven.

Whether or not I'd read such a blog is a function of whether or not it's good (for some definition of "good" that, perhaps at a minimum, the author thinks is a good piece of prose).

My observation is that readable writings are readable because the author can't help but write them. The choice of medium is orthogonal and related to how loud a person wishes to speak and to whom and with what level of quality.

My concern at this point is that the author did not ask this question themselves...writing inherently comes with the risk of cricket sounds.

Good luck.

If your wife is already interested in writing about this, and already doing it, then there is absolutely value: to her. She gets to process what she's working through and pour it out on paper. That's already great. It will absolutely also look great on her portfolio. It might also be good tech exposure for her to start working with either Wordpress, or extra bonus points, Jekyll, and version control.

Speaking as someone who mentors other people in making their way through data to programming, yes, please, please have her write about this!

There are so many people looking to get into programming, but literally have no idea where to start because the whole universe is overwhelming to them and full of people who seem to be programming forever. HN is probably not the audience for this blog, but hundreds of thousands of data analysts and people who use Excel on a day-to-day basis are.

Finally, a nitpick, but I'd take issue with "These aren't enough to actually work in our industry" - if she's working with technical skills and wants to learn more, she's already in the industry and then some.

Good luck to her!

As an experienced dev I wouldn't bother reading it for the tech side.

However if there are some good nuggets about how to juggle learning something new with parental responsibility, how to get the time and energy to do this, stuff about cost of nannies, pressure on relationship and partner and finances etc. That stuff would interest me.

As others indicated, if she finds it valuable for herself, she should write.

Can she reflect well on what she did and is she a good writer? Both will have an enormous impact on whether _others_ will want to read what she writes and thus on whether she should consider making her writings public.