When I first thought of blogging, it was for two reasons: having an activity log and learning more quickly (and thoroughly).
Activity Log
Like any other developer, I often face new and interesting problems. Also, like many other developers, I face the same “new” problems again and again and have to rediscover the solutions because I forgot either the solution, or the reasoning behind it. A personal blog would be a perfect place to keep track of problems and their solution. And if other people can benefit from this, hey, that’s a big plus.
Learning
The second reason (and probably the most important) is learning. In the last 6 months I have been thinking a lot about learning. The way I learn is pretty common: grab a book and read it cover-to-cover. The thing is, there’s a limited amount of books that you can read this way. Also, if I don’t exercise what I learn immediately, I forget most of the book in a couple of months.
One of the best ways to learn something is actually teaching. It makes a lot of sense: every time I had to teach something, I gained a lot out of the experience. You can do this step in multiple ways: talk with someone, do a tutorial, deliver a presentation or you could start…
Blogging
Writing a good blog post on a topic should force you to fill any knowledge gaps and find a good way of organizing the information.
I once took a blogging course. My favorite homework on this course was having to come up with 50 (yes, 50!) blog post ideas. Although it seemed quite daunting at first, after about 30 minutes, ideas really started flowing. I guess this homework really hit the nail on its head – coming up with post ideas might not be as difficult as you may think. Of course, there is a long road from post idea to blog post and it does require commitment, but coming up with ideas is half the battle.
So this is it – this blog will help me remember more, learn more, share more. Check back soon!
Really good to see you’re getting along with your blogging. I like how you’re focusing on learning and logging discoveries in public through your blog.
I also loved the assignment of coming up with 50 blogpost ideas. It was slow at first, but then things just started to click.
Best of luck to you with your blogventures!
Thanks a lot!
Hey,
I’m a fellow SP blogging course graduate (my blog is https://codetheweb.blog/ ) and couldn’t agree more!
Especially the bit about learning, that is something that I didn’t really think about when I started, but by teaching what I know to other people I have been able to fill gaps in my knowledge and the small details of languages.
Anyway, I’ve been going for a few months now and I got kind of annoyed, because there’s not really a centralized place for us tech bloggers to talk, share ideas, organize guest-posts or give feedback to each other.
So, a few days back I created a Slack room for us to all hang out and give advice etc.
https://programmingbloggers.herokuapp.com/
So far there are 13 of us and we want to make it a fun, active and vibrant community so it would be really cool if you joined and came and hung out with us!