The main reason I blog is to improve my writing. Because I've been blogging for about 10 years, I have a record of how it's changed over time. I'd like to think that it's gotten better, but I have no feedback on that.
Most of what I blog about is whatever game I've finished playing. I usually end up collaborating what others have said, but I'll add in a few notes or grievances that stand out to me that I haven't found anyone else talking about. When I read an old post, I'll come across those little things and I remember exactly what I was thinking about and why I wrote that.
> I'm not a good programmer
Me neither. I'm not some demigod like John Carmack. I'm an everyday programmer working the web mines. When I'm not blogging about games, I sometimes blog about some nifty feature I implemented[1] or novel way of solving a problem that I wanted to take note of.
> I don't think it's good CV building
I'm 99% certain that no one has read my blog and wanted to hire me because of it.
I guess that's a long-winded way of saying that I write and blog for myself. I use it more like a personal journal instead of groundbreaking thoughts that I want everyone to read.
It was a good read, you clearly have interesting things to say!
I do share a lot of the same things you describe. I would like to blog, mainly for myself to practice writing and keep a record of things, but yeah, it’s difficult. I also find it’s a lot of work to do the research and all, time I maybe rather spend on building things.
It is, but AFAICT the entire blog is just this post.
> I also find it’s a lot of work to do the research and all, time I maybe rather spend on building things
I found it useful to set a timer and write about small things, e.g. through this post [1] about blocking websites with /etc/hosts. It took about 20 minutes and I can share it with my interested friends. If I were a little faster, I could probably do it in 10.
> It is, but AFAICT the entire blog is just this post.
A solid start! I'm looking forward to the next one.
> I found it useful to set a timer and write about small things
I should try that. I do enjoy the deep dive into a topic, but then I will never finish/publish something. Also quite perfectionistic which doesn't help, but your strategy sounds interesting, will give that a go.
I like your short story format btw, it's nice, and interesting topics as well. Also looks like you are on a good streak, keep it going!
Thank you! And I hear you on the perfectionism -- another reason I held off for so long, and something I'll write about in the future. Unweaving it has been so freeing, and at the same time I'm doing better work than ever before.
Thanks for sharing. I know the answer for the following question may differ for the individual, but how long (or how many posts) did it take to find your “stride” so to speak?
I wouldn't say I have a "stride" now. I don't write unless I personally feel the topic is interesting so it's tough to call my writing scheduled or disciplined.
Most of my posts go almost completely unread -- that's fine by me.
I completely empathize, and it's why I held off on it for so long.
But recently I quit my job and decided to start in order to keep myself accountable. I've been pleasantly surprised by what I've gotten out of it so far and wrote down my thoughts here:
I do not understand the concept of self-accountability. If I say I'm going to do something for myself and not do it then what? If it is the self "shame" (for lack of a better word) for not performing/completing the goal/task I set for myself it will have to go to the end of the line of "self shame"; a very long line with many far more shameful things I've done/haven't done/started-and-not-completed through out my 51+ years.
I do envy those who can hold themselves accountable and get things done.
For me, self-accountability isn't about shame. It's realizing that in my better & stronger moments, I identified my goals and what I wanted to accomplish. So now, when it's time to execute (and I'm perhaps in a weaker moment), I trust the previous version of myself and follow my original plan.
Another way of putting it is that for me, blogging is giving me some structure right now that I find useful.
Blogging daily enforces some measure of discipline on my time. Then I build the habit of putting serious effort into something every day, even in the absence of a job. The fact that it's intrinsic is also quite empowering. And if I want to be satisfied with what I write, I need to push myself and write about things that are difficult for me, i.e. new or complex ideas. Especially since I'm using this time to reflect, that means thinking about my values, my work habits, and my long-term career goals. When I look at my cumulative posts I can see that I've done some creative and satisfying. And these posts are also artifacts I can share with others, so there's a social element too.
In the absence of that, especially with my new glut of free time, I could see myself falling into the trap of not really doing anything. Maybe not immediately, but over time. And while that's certainly not a bad place to be, it's not where I want to go. So there's a protective element to this too; if I break the routine, I'll know immediately that something has gone astray.
I have a blog. Almost nobody reads it. That's okay!
I treat it like a public notebook. When I find something interesting, I write a quick blog post. When I have to muddle through a technical issue that requires piecing together multiple other sources on the Internet, I write a blog post to summarize. I've written blog posts on getting Walmart security videos to play (Verint codec is a bitch), decoding Marine Corps brig phone call audio time stamps, setting up CAC readers and DoD Root Certificates on a Mac, actually moving Time Machine history to a new Mac (which should happen automatically but never seems to work for me), etc.
My blog isn't the only source of this information on the web. It usually isn't the first source. It's rarely the best source (for a while, it was the best source for figuring out Walmart Verint security videos, but my solution is now outdated). But I do my best to put things together in a way that will be helpful to someone in the future who doesn't know what he's doing -- even and especially if that future ignoramus is me.
> They are your typical run-of-the-mill tutorials that replicate what's written on the official framework/language guide
Yep, I'd like to permanently blacklist those idiotic baeldung, w3schools, tutorialspoint, and geeksforgeeks blogspam entries that SEO'ed themselves to the top of every google search I do for anything programming related.
There's an extension for Chrome and Firefox called "uBlacklist" that lets you do exactly this - you can maintain a list of domains that you never want to appear in the results of Google searches that you do.
You don’t need an extension. You can just use the `-site` operator, and put your list in a bookmarklet, or use your browser’s ability to define search shortcuts, if it has that.
I've found baeldung to be quite helpful actually. What do you not like about it? I understand what you mean though, I don't like the garbage programming-related articles from a lot of these sites you've listed. Even I as a newb developer have seen very poor advice or wrong info on w3schools, for example.
w3schools has come a long way since the days of w3fools. What incorrect info. do you see on w3schools currently ? I find it to be a decent source these days.
> I've found baeldung to be quite helpful actually. What do you not like about it?
It's probably great when you're looking to fill some gaps but not when you're starting fresh and trying to wrap your head around some things. Many a times I've found the examples incomplete in the sense that yes, they work (usually) but just show me how, not why. Or maybe it's just the nature of the beast that Spring is. I've given up on Baeldung, I skip it when googling Java related stuff. But that's just my experience.
Whats funny is they have SEO'd their way to the top and once you are accustomed to it and scroll past them you are also scrolling past the top (or maybe all) the ads on the right hand side of search results.
Baeldung I've found to be fantastic for Java tricks and Java library usage. Geeksforgeeks blogspam really helped me with algorithm problems while preparing for Leetcode-style interviews.
I'd agree though that w3schools and tutorialspoint do as much harm as good.
But sometimes official documentation can be cryptic like man pages and some Python documentation. Those g4gs and others usually have easy to understand examples and some extra explanation you don't in get official documentation.
Try the userscript "Google Hit Hider by Domain (Search Filter / Block Sites)" by Jefferson Scher, whom you may know as one of the top support specialist at Mozilla: http://www.jeffersonscher.com/gm/google-hit-hider/
"GHHbD" is a precursor to uBlacklist; and was THE replacement to blocking sites on Google Search after Google removed the built-in function, many years ago.
I use my blog to keep a journal on technical issues that were hard to fix, or was hard to find web sources about the subject. One of my top post is about using PFSense router with Verizon FIOS. It usually receives 2-3 unique visitors a day. It is simple and not interesting, but it helps a few people, so I keep it online.
I was once looking for a solution to some technical problem, clicked on a promising web result, and found myself at my blog. I had posted a solution several years earlier but had forgotten about it.
> I was once looking for a solution to some technical problem, clicked on a promising web result, and found myself at my blog. I had posted a solution several years earlier but had forgotten about it.
That is funny.
Once I recognized that I have been researching the same topics I have researched before, it motivated me to change my blog from a "Hack the Box" showcase blog, to adding my technical journal on topics that were hard to find online and sharing my experience with certifications.
I have been thinking of adding more personal entries, but I don't want to make the blog a social media.
I occasionally (yesterday in fact) experience this on StackOverflow. I'll be looking for an answer and come across one of my own answers or comments that I have no recollection of writing.
Once I have a weird curl bug that the software was using and I went to GitHub to report the issue. Turn out I did report the issues 4 years ago and there is no one to look into this. For some reason the software was having curl errors due to Windows' version of curl. The only way I can fix this is to
'remove-item alias:curl" since the alias is set to Invoke-WebRequest in PowerShell when software want to use curl command. Yes there is curl.exe but the software didn't know that.
>"You've got to be willing to read other people's code, and then write your own, then have other people review your code. You've got to want to be in this incredible feedback loop where you get the world-class people to tell you what you're doing wrong." -Bill Gates
>"Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a
violent psychopath who knows where you live. Code for readability." -John Woods
To summarize: Some day you might discover that you need to maintain your own code you wrote a long time ago, and you've turned into a violent psychopath who can remember your own address.
Circular reference? Joking aside, you write for yourself first when you write a blog. You learn better when writing about something and you see the gaps in your understanding when you try to explain something to others.
It is not the case that "things" are interesting in and of themselves.
An audience finds them interesting or not. Interest is a property of the listener or observer.
You can just comment on the things you find interesting, and presumably there are some people out there more or less like you that will find the same things interesting.
It is worth noting that it takes some skill and effort to make things interesting for an audience, and that can be substantial.
It's hard to judge what other people would find interesting about what you have to say. Things you think are obvious are obvious and boring may be illuminating to others, and vice versa.
Anyway, I don't think the author has really given blogging a fair shake.
> On his blog, Aaron Swartz explains how writing things down will help him reflect better on his thoughts.
The author doesn't really investigate this line of thought. The thing about writing a blog post is that good writing requires clear thinking, and clear thinking is useful!
It would be nice if we could tap into that benefit in personal journals without publishing a blog, but as far as I can tell, most people write differently when they write only for themselves. There's a number of benefits of writing for an audience, even if that audience turns out not to exist. When I blog, I feel forced to justify my reasoning and investigate alternatives. I feel the need to explain something a little deeper than whatever literal series of events that I'm talking about.
I think programmers who don't like writing and don't like sharing should at least give blogging a shot... there's a chance that it will help you think better, and there are also plenty of opportunities that will open for you if you are a stronger writer.
my evisceral impression from this - blog post - is the author really needs a good boost for their morale and self valuation and confidence and the results may or may not include a amount of blogging, but will answer the call for a response which I am certain is written through every single pixel of this unnecessarily self deprecating rhetoric. the author clearly should, sometime, explore their writing skills and technology insights, but I don't think that is what has prompted this or what actually matters.
> good writing requires clear thinking, and clear thinking is useful!
Exactly this. The act of writing it down (whatever "it" is - code, prose, marketing materials, technical documents, mind maps, whatever) is inseparable from the process by which it was invented. If you value the end product, you have to value the process as a forcing function for clear thinking.
But that doesn't mean you have to publish a blog! There are other ways to transfer knowledge. Personally, most of my writing efforts have gone from blogging to markdown files in github repos.
The author is also complaining that blog posts are n-copies of something original. This whole programming and cs business is all like that. How many of us read academic papers that first described this algorithm or that technique? Most of us never do. We are consuming copies of copies of copies and it just works!! A blog post by a beginner on something might more approachable to other beginner who might find the expert's explanation intimidating, maybe because the expert that just assumed his audience knows so much.
I found Kernighan's book quite riveting. If you want the short version (this might spoil some of the book) this talk is quite something: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY6q5dv_B-o
FB and Twitter don't require subject lines. I think this is one of the biggest factors in their attraction for writing (ignoring social aspects). Facebook and most other social media gives a simple writing prompt "what's up?". There's no need to plan out the post or give it a title. This is the same UX as text messages/messaging over e-mail. You can just write a message.
The implied requirement and/or UI requiring a subject line or title to a post or e-mail is a pain in the ass. People don't want to metacognate on what they're trying to say. They just want to type out a thought or ask a question.
Blog software tends to enforce things like a subject/title because it often generates a URL from it. Facebook et al don't give a shit about such things. A post is just the latest and it gets assigned an ID number.
Even the HN favorite RSS suffers from this because it really wants entries to have titles. They're not technically necessary but most reader software uses titles for UI elements. The implied requirement to title everything I think creates a higher barrier of entry than most people want to deal with.
Even this post I'm typing, if I had to title it I'd probably not bother. I have something to say but having to think up a contextual title for it would be a waste of time and serve no benefit to the point I'm trying to make.
I think, for a lot of people, "I don't have anything interesting to say" could more accurately be translated into, "I'm afraid of finding out something I believe is interesting actually isn't to anyone else."
Rarely do people genuinely think, and operate, as if nothing they could articulate will be relevant to anyone else. It's literally the entire purpose of communication.
I have had an on-off relationship with writing for most of my life.
The unintuitive truth about writing is that the writing happens before the sentences happen. Another way people make this point is by saying “writing is really just revising”.
I think it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that writing is the second step in a linear process, the first of which is “finding out what to say, or coming up with an idea or opinion”. No. Simply write. If you can’t think of anything, write “I have writer’s block” then write the next random sentence that comes to your head. If necessary, just write down an amusing string of random words. Follow it up with another. If possible use a pen and paper, and most of all, try to make it a ritualistic practice. Whether it’s once a day, once a week, or once a month the important thing is to just keep at it even if you have nothing to write, even if it’s an exercise in producing garbage.
For every great text out there there’s an ocean of miscellany that went into the trash bin or manifested as (e.g. hacker news comments). You’ll often come to something significant during the act of writing. The only thing you really need to master is getting into a state in which you don’t censor yourself, you’re comfortable with facing your deep buried demons, with your own ignorance, and your desires. Once you do that, the content will flow naturally. Then put your editor hat on and decide what to publish, what should remain private and what should be destroyed.
Thinking is conducted through material processes, like putting a pen to paper or staring at birds. Ever since Descartes, there’s an error people tend to make in divorcing thought/their mental life from their embodied existence—the two are not separable.
When it comes to writing, remember Nike’s motto.
As an illustration of this point, none of the sentences in this post were floating around in my head or formulated until I started typing it out. If you had asked me to dictate a response on this topic it would have been entirely different.
"If you had asked me to dictate a response on this topic, it would have been entirely different."
There is a risk very few of the supporters of "writing as a way of thinking" talk about, and that is you write what during writing feels the right thing to write, but not what you wanted to write.
I have a blog, to write things as a note for myself. It has helped me keep pushing and satisfying my curiosity. I write random things. I don't even have trackers or cookies enabled because I do not care if blog gets any view!
So if you are afraid that people will find it boring, then write for yourself. Writing for oneself means you want to be able to write in a way such that you will go back to your note to remind you of things you learned.
As you as said, pointing to the original is enough. If that is it, then just log those links and when you have time, go through them again! Once you will understand it is quite time consuming to review it, you may start writing!
Good thing about writing in public is that you will want to set a bar for yourself. Something like commitment! Setting this bar will slowly improve your thought process and it brings other positive effects!
It maintains a level of commitment. I don't normally write for myself, because I will always keep going back to the original source. But when I need something, that I feel like I need for a long time, I write it as if someone else is going to read it. This helps me escape all the lazy points that I have!
I kind of agree with the author. There's also a lot of garbage content online and the problem with:
> I don't have anything interesting to say
is that people who truly don't have anything interesting to say often don't have the self-awareness to think like that.
I used to have a blog. Actually, multiple blogs back in the mid aughts and I've learned the following:
- from a game theory perspective, unless you're really good and have truly interesting things to say, you'll be better off not saying anything as you only have things to lose. You're only increasing your 'attack surface' for stalkers, future job prospects, etc.. It's very hard to keep things to yourself especially when you start having a following and then you start to overshare, push out some ideas some might find controversial or even ideas which become controversial as time goes by. You're better off just not saying shit.
- if you have a dry technical blog which may help some poor souls only searching for a technical solution then go for it. But don't try to make a career out of it.
- if you work for a BigCo, you need to self-censor big time. Anything you say can be associated with your workplace (regardless of your disclaimer) and get you in hot water.
- even if you are anonymous, that's not a guarantee you won't get doxxed (see Slate Star Codex as an example).
- if you think it will help your job prospects, even if you have a dry emotionless uncontroversial blog, think again. Nobody actually gives a shit about your blog except if you're on a very VERY narrow technology niche with few professionals. I don't know about others, but in most of my employment efforts, hiring gauntlet maintainers barely care about your actual experience and your blog is not even a data point.
A few years ago, I decided to stop blogging and instead focus that energy towards sharing my work and thoughts in other (typically more academic) venues. So, now, I focus more on posters, talks, papers, and the like in my professional spaces. It's a bit more involved than just throwing up a blog post, but it also helps me narrow in my interests so the work I do submit is more complete and interesting. It also has a wider audience than my blog ever had. And so, instead, my personal website looks more like an academic CV with links to my work presented at conferences and in journals, but with a decidedly industry spin and sometimes with some additional context/summary.
YMMV, but just a thought for those that are also weighing decisions around blogging versus not.
That's interesting. I have heard a lot about posters from academics over the years. Is there some huge virtual corkboard for academics somewhere or where do these posters go and what are they for? (If you get a second for HN comments :-))
They're typically just easy ways to submit early work, work in progress, etc to a conference with relatively little commitment.
I'm in the biomedical informatics world generally, and for my conferences it's a one-page abstract that describes your work, if accepted after peer review (which, there's a 90% acceptance rate) you then make a poster with more details about what you did and then stand by it for about an hour during the conference and answer any questions from people walking by. Then I typically just have links to the abstract and PDF of the poster on my website.
The poster doesn't prevent you from doing anything further... so, if you keep working on it, you can turn it into a talk or paper. And a lot of companies will pay for your travel to a conference if you're presenting, so it's often the lowest-effort way to get your company to pay for you to go to a conference.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 220 ms ] thread> I don't have anything interesting to say
The main reason I blog is to improve my writing. Because I've been blogging for about 10 years, I have a record of how it's changed over time. I'd like to think that it's gotten better, but I have no feedback on that.
Most of what I blog about is whatever game I've finished playing. I usually end up collaborating what others have said, but I'll add in a few notes or grievances that stand out to me that I haven't found anyone else talking about. When I read an old post, I'll come across those little things and I remember exactly what I was thinking about and why I wrote that.
> I'm not a good programmer
Me neither. I'm not some demigod like John Carmack. I'm an everyday programmer working the web mines. When I'm not blogging about games, I sometimes blog about some nifty feature I implemented[1] or novel way of solving a problem that I wanted to take note of.
> I don't think it's good CV building
I'm 99% certain that no one has read my blog and wanted to hire me because of it.
I guess that's a long-winded way of saying that I write and blog for myself. I use it more like a personal journal instead of groundbreaking thoughts that I want everyone to read.
[0] https://theandrewbailey.com/
[1] https://theandrewbailey.com/article/220/Background-Text-and-...
It was a good read, you clearly have interesting things to say!
I do share a lot of the same things you describe. I would like to blog, mainly for myself to practice writing and keep a record of things, but yeah, it’s difficult. I also find it’s a lot of work to do the research and all, time I maybe rather spend on building things.
It is, but AFAICT the entire blog is just this post.
> I also find it’s a lot of work to do the research and all, time I maybe rather spend on building things
I found it useful to set a timer and write about small things, e.g. through this post [1] about blocking websites with /etc/hosts. It took about 20 minutes and I can share it with my interested friends. If I were a little faster, I could probably do it in 10.
[1]: https://arunkprasad.com/log/how-to-break-the-habit-loop-for-...
A solid start! I'm looking forward to the next one.
> I found it useful to set a timer and write about small things
I should try that. I do enjoy the deep dive into a topic, but then I will never finish/publish something. Also quite perfectionistic which doesn't help, but your strategy sounds interesting, will give that a go.
I like your short story format btw, it's nice, and interesting topics as well. Also looks like you are on a good streak, keep it going!
I'm in the same boat as you are, but I think if you put yourself out there you'd be surprised how much interest there is in the things you write.
I had a blog post featured in a Ruby newsletter because I shared it on Reddit:
https://blog.ty-porter.dev/
Most of my posts go almost completely unread -- that's fine by me.
I see the value in having a blog in that it does no harm to contribute something likely no one will find.
Some of the best essays I have written started out as letters, after all.
But recently I quit my job and decided to start in order to keep myself accountable. I've been pleasantly surprised by what I've gotten out of it so far and wrote down my thoughts here:
https://arunkprasad.com/log/why-i-blog/
I do envy those who can hold themselves accountable and get things done.
Blogging daily enforces some measure of discipline on my time. Then I build the habit of putting serious effort into something every day, even in the absence of a job. The fact that it's intrinsic is also quite empowering. And if I want to be satisfied with what I write, I need to push myself and write about things that are difficult for me, i.e. new or complex ideas. Especially since I'm using this time to reflect, that means thinking about my values, my work habits, and my long-term career goals. When I look at my cumulative posts I can see that I've done some creative and satisfying. And these posts are also artifacts I can share with others, so there's a social element too.
In the absence of that, especially with my new glut of free time, I could see myself falling into the trap of not really doing anything. Maybe not immediately, but over time. And while that's certainly not a bad place to be, it's not where I want to go. So there's a protective element to this too; if I break the routine, I'll know immediately that something has gone astray.
I treat it like a public notebook. When I find something interesting, I write a quick blog post. When I have to muddle through a technical issue that requires piecing together multiple other sources on the Internet, I write a blog post to summarize. I've written blog posts on getting Walmart security videos to play (Verint codec is a bitch), decoding Marine Corps brig phone call audio time stamps, setting up CAC readers and DoD Root Certificates on a Mac, actually moving Time Machine history to a new Mac (which should happen automatically but never seems to work for me), etc.
My blog isn't the only source of this information on the web. It usually isn't the first source. It's rarely the best source (for a while, it was the best source for figuring out Walmart Verint security videos, but my solution is now outdated). But I do my best to put things together in a way that will be helpful to someone in the future who doesn't know what he's doing -- even and especially if that future ignoramus is me.
I also mostly use it as a public brain dump for things that I don't want to forget.
Yep, I'd like to permanently blacklist those idiotic baeldung, w3schools, tutorialspoint, and geeksforgeeks blogspam entries that SEO'ed themselves to the top of every google search I do for anything programming related.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublacklist/
It's probably great when you're looking to fill some gaps but not when you're starting fresh and trying to wrap your head around some things. Many a times I've found the examples incomplete in the sense that yes, they work (usually) but just show me how, not why. Or maybe it's just the nature of the beast that Spring is. I've given up on Baeldung, I skip it when googling Java related stuff. But that's just my experience.
I'd agree though that w3schools and tutorialspoint do as much harm as good.
"GHHbD" is a precursor to uBlacklist; and was THE replacement to blocking sites on Google Search after Google removed the built-in function, many years ago.
The disadvantage of GHHbD is that it doesn't handled regex filtering. However one of its many advantages is that it does block TLDs: https://greasyfork.org/en/forum/discussion/comment/55821/#Co...
I don't agree with this part.
I use my blog to keep a journal on technical issues that were hard to fix, or was hard to find web sources about the subject. One of my top post is about using PFSense router with Verizon FIOS. It usually receives 2-3 unique visitors a day. It is simple and not interesting, but it helps a few people, so I keep it online.
https://ianmf.com
That is funny.
Once I recognized that I have been researching the same topics I have researched before, it motivated me to change my blog from a "Hack the Box" showcase blog, to adding my technical journal on topics that were hard to find online and sharing my experience with certifications.
I have been thinking of adding more personal entries, but I don't want to make the blog a social media.
I've also run into comments I made on boards years, or even decades ago, and thought "there's a smart person," then realized I'd made the comment.
It's always pleasant to say hello to yourself.
https://libquotes.com/bill-gates/quote/lbs9p7l
>"My favourite is when you're a solopreneur working in your own repos and still asking yourself "who wrote this shit?!" -rozenmd
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29874627
>"Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live. Code for readability." -John Woods
https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.c++/c/rYCO5yn4lXw/m/oI...
To summarize: Some day you might discover that you need to maintain your own code you wrote a long time ago, and you've turned into a violent psychopath who can remember your own address.
An audience finds them interesting or not. Interest is a property of the listener or observer.
You can just comment on the things you find interesting, and presumably there are some people out there more or less like you that will find the same things interesting.
It is worth noting that it takes some skill and effort to make things interesting for an audience, and that can be substantial.
It is an "Everything / Nothing" type of content.
"The website's content means everything to the publisher, but it could mean nothing to the rest of the world."
It's hard to judge what other people would find interesting about what you have to say. Things you think are obvious are obvious and boring may be illuminating to others, and vice versa.
Anyway, I don't think the author has really given blogging a fair shake.
> On his blog, Aaron Swartz explains how writing things down will help him reflect better on his thoughts.
The author doesn't really investigate this line of thought. The thing about writing a blog post is that good writing requires clear thinking, and clear thinking is useful!
It would be nice if we could tap into that benefit in personal journals without publishing a blog, but as far as I can tell, most people write differently when they write only for themselves. There's a number of benefits of writing for an audience, even if that audience turns out not to exist. When I blog, I feel forced to justify my reasoning and investigate alternatives. I feel the need to explain something a little deeper than whatever literal series of events that I'm talking about.
I think programmers who don't like writing and don't like sharing should at least give blogging a shot... there's a chance that it will help you think better, and there are also plenty of opportunities that will open for you if you are a stronger writer.
Exactly this. The act of writing it down (whatever "it" is - code, prose, marketing materials, technical documents, mind maps, whatever) is inseparable from the process by which it was invented. If you value the end product, you have to value the process as a forcing function for clear thinking.
But that doesn't mean you have to publish a blog! There are other ways to transfer knowledge. Personally, most of my writing efforts have gone from blogging to markdown files in github repos.
Adding that one to the buy list.
Actually I want to read all three (The Cathedral & the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond, and UNIX: A History and a Memoir by Brian Kernigha).
The implied requirement and/or UI requiring a subject line or title to a post or e-mail is a pain in the ass. People don't want to metacognate on what they're trying to say. They just want to type out a thought or ask a question.
Blog software tends to enforce things like a subject/title because it often generates a URL from it. Facebook et al don't give a shit about such things. A post is just the latest and it gets assigned an ID number.
Even the HN favorite RSS suffers from this because it really wants entries to have titles. They're not technically necessary but most reader software uses titles for UI elements. The implied requirement to title everything I think creates a higher barrier of entry than most people want to deal with.
Even this post I'm typing, if I had to title it I'd probably not bother. I have something to say but having to think up a contextual title for it would be a waste of time and serve no benefit to the point I'm trying to make.
Rarely do people genuinely think, and operate, as if nothing they could articulate will be relevant to anyone else. It's literally the entire purpose of communication.
The unintuitive truth about writing is that the writing happens before the sentences happen. Another way people make this point is by saying “writing is really just revising”.
I think it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that writing is the second step in a linear process, the first of which is “finding out what to say, or coming up with an idea or opinion”. No. Simply write. If you can’t think of anything, write “I have writer’s block” then write the next random sentence that comes to your head. If necessary, just write down an amusing string of random words. Follow it up with another. If possible use a pen and paper, and most of all, try to make it a ritualistic practice. Whether it’s once a day, once a week, or once a month the important thing is to just keep at it even if you have nothing to write, even if it’s an exercise in producing garbage.
For every great text out there there’s an ocean of miscellany that went into the trash bin or manifested as (e.g. hacker news comments). You’ll often come to something significant during the act of writing. The only thing you really need to master is getting into a state in which you don’t censor yourself, you’re comfortable with facing your deep buried demons, with your own ignorance, and your desires. Once you do that, the content will flow naturally. Then put your editor hat on and decide what to publish, what should remain private and what should be destroyed.
Thinking is conducted through material processes, like putting a pen to paper or staring at birds. Ever since Descartes, there’s an error people tend to make in divorcing thought/their mental life from their embodied existence—the two are not separable.
When it comes to writing, remember Nike’s motto.
As an illustration of this point, none of the sentences in this post were floating around in my head or formulated until I started typing it out. If you had asked me to dictate a response on this topic it would have been entirely different.
There is a risk very few of the supporters of "writing as a way of thinking" talk about, and that is you write what during writing feels the right thing to write, but not what you wanted to write.
It may SEEM blog like though. There are articles with my opinions and lots of great info. They just aren't in a chronological order or dated.
I go in depth here: https://kolemcrae.com/notebook/notablog.html
Instead of "why I don't have a blog" maybe one should reframe it as "why do I have nothing to share"?
So if you are afraid that people will find it boring, then write for yourself. Writing for oneself means you want to be able to write in a way such that you will go back to your note to remind you of things you learned.
As you as said, pointing to the original is enough. If that is it, then just log those links and when you have time, go through them again! Once you will understand it is quite time consuming to review it, you may start writing!
Good thing about writing in public is that you will want to set a bar for yourself. Something like commitment! Setting this bar will slowly improve your thought process and it brings other positive effects!
> I don't have anything interesting to say
is that people who truly don't have anything interesting to say often don't have the self-awareness to think like that.
I used to have a blog. Actually, multiple blogs back in the mid aughts and I've learned the following:
- from a game theory perspective, unless you're really good and have truly interesting things to say, you'll be better off not saying anything as you only have things to lose. You're only increasing your 'attack surface' for stalkers, future job prospects, etc.. It's very hard to keep things to yourself especially when you start having a following and then you start to overshare, push out some ideas some might find controversial or even ideas which become controversial as time goes by. You're better off just not saying shit.
- if you have a dry technical blog which may help some poor souls only searching for a technical solution then go for it. But don't try to make a career out of it.
- if you work for a BigCo, you need to self-censor big time. Anything you say can be associated with your workplace (regardless of your disclaimer) and get you in hot water.
- even if you are anonymous, that's not a guarantee you won't get doxxed (see Slate Star Codex as an example).
- if you think it will help your job prospects, even if you have a dry emotionless uncontroversial blog, think again. Nobody actually gives a shit about your blog except if you're on a very VERY narrow technology niche with few professionals. I don't know about others, but in most of my employment efforts, hiring gauntlet maintainers barely care about your actual experience and your blog is not even a data point.
YMMV, but just a thought for those that are also weighing decisions around blogging versus not.
I'm in the biomedical informatics world generally, and for my conferences it's a one-page abstract that describes your work, if accepted after peer review (which, there's a 90% acceptance rate) you then make a poster with more details about what you did and then stand by it for about an hour during the conference and answer any questions from people walking by. Then I typically just have links to the abstract and PDF of the poster on my website.
The poster doesn't prevent you from doing anything further... so, if you keep working on it, you can turn it into a talk or paper. And a lot of companies will pay for your travel to a conference if you're presenting, so it's often the lowest-effort way to get your company to pay for you to go to a conference.
Write for your colleagues, your partner, or just yourself, so you can clarify the streams of thought in your head and bang them against something.
Even if you never publish, you'll benefit. Chances are, you'll find a few you want to publish along the way.
Btw, I've been thinking of the younger cousin of blogging a lot lately. Gemlogs on the geminispace, that is. Seems like a nice place to be, is all.
JAMstack if you’d prefer to tinker with the blogging system.