
Why it's great to write blog posts - SanderKnape
https://sanderknape.com/2020/04/why-great-write-blog-posts/
======
codazoda
I started my blog 15 years ago. The tactic I take is to write things I think I
might need again. I often write very simple blog posts, at first, and then
refine those over time. For things that I only do once in a while they're
valuable to refer back to. I also get a lot of nice comments from strangers
saying things like, "thanks for posting that". It's definitely worth it. I
write for myself, first.

~~~
codegeek
" I write for myself, first."

Exactly. I do this on my unknown blog and I love it. If someone else reads it,
sure np. For me, it is more of a personal journal/diary of things that I want
to write about or remember.

------
antipaul
Just to add perspective, one reason why it’s _not_ great is the deluge of poor
quality information and therefore potential for bias and “the silent majority
of experts”, where you can read a bunch of stuff and feel like you know a lot,
when in fact you have large knowledge gaps.

Eg. There is tons of info and blogs on machine learning out there. But in my
experience, reading a lot of that can lead to a false sense of knowledge,
where you seem to know a lot, but actually lack even the fundamentals.

Still, this shouldn’t discourage folks to start blogging!

But it’s an unsolved problem how to balance these concerns.

~~~
TheLastSamurai
That's where "content is king" and search engine basics come to rescue. If
search engine does its job well, high quality content will always turn up
before low quality ones. If a programming article turned up on page-1, then it
shouldn't matter whether it was written by someone with or without knowledge
gap?

~~~
papeda
> If search engine does its job well

This is the problem of blogspam. There are plenty of "popular" blogs that are
good at SEO and produce little to no good content.

------
DanHulton
I blog, though I tend to try to keep that on a more "professional" level.
Stuff I'd want a future employer or potential customer to see. That can be
hard to write, though, because it often requires being in a certain mood to
write or edit, and sometimes it can be a while before I feel in a
"professional enough" mood.

I find it also helps to keep a journal, just for me. Start by recapping what's
happened since the last time you wrote, or big events or thoughts on your
mind. I often find that I start writing in my journal without any idea what to
write about, and I end up having written a thousand words by the time I'm
done, most of it without any pain at all. It's not polished in any way, but
it's cathartic, and it's practice.

Plus, going back and re-reading what I was thinking, feeling, and doing during
critical moments of my life is often inspirational. Some things I handled far
better than I remembered, others, well, let's just say I've grown more than I
thought. =)

~~~
caleb-allen
I'm the same way. Well, minus the blog. I've been meaning to put one up
since.. well a long time. But in the meantime I've had my own journal, and
it's a great place to make sense of things, past and present.

------
hef19898
I started writing blog posts when I started my comapny last year. The plan was
to wrie one per week, then one every two weeks, then one per months. I settled
for one everytime I manage to.

Reasons are mostly time and capacity. Time wise, there are so much things to
do that writting a blog post worth publishing is not feasible as often as I
wished. Also, worthwhile posts take mental effort. Coming up with a topic,
defining the exact content, and finally writting it. Also, my blog posts are
about my work. So I don't want to spend every minute thinking about work.

That being said, it is a great excersice, in writting, in thinking problems
through and in explaining them. And if some readers, of the few I have, take
somehing usefaull away from it, even better!

------
Altaer
I certainly agree with the article. Something I have struggled with that has
prevented me from writing more, is that I get near 0 eyes on the articles I
spend a lot of time writing and thinking through. I'm not sure how to ever get
eyes on my blogs, which has me discouraged from continuing writing more. I use
Medium and post the articles to HN/twitter, but it hasn't seemed to help any.

~~~
jeremiecoullon
Your website is [http://www.oliverpeat.com/](http://www.oliverpeat.com/),
right? I couldn't find your medium profile from there (though I may have
missed it). Could you maybe have your posts also on your website?

~~~
Altaer
Yeah, great idea. I will add them there as well, thanks!

------
Pxtl
To me, the thing about getting back into blogging is that it's worked in tight
co-operation with taking meticulous process notes as I do something adminny.
When I'm programming, my product is the program, and all the writing and
documentation therein, so I don't feel the temptation to write or take as many
notes.

But when working on adminny tasks? I have to take meticulous process notes so
that I can reproduce my work, because the product is a working system without
self-documentation as to _how_ I got it working.

That naturally leads to a blog post, because I have a linear document of my
work - what worked, what didn't, the hows and whys of my decisions, etc.

------
Tade0
I have a blog but it's been a struggle to create new entries since I realized
that my writing - at least in English - is not amazing - to put it mildly.

I was made aware of that by my friend who studied English for years and also
dated a translator (some "expanding brain" meme potential over here), who
agreed to correct one of my posts - and correct he did.

I have a lot to say, but just not enough time to write it down and publish.

So yeah, this will definitely land in my CV, but I don't expect it to be
useful for anything else anytime soon.

~~~
renjimen
Your English is great if this post is anything to go by. Also, I think people
are quite forgiving of language mistakes if the content is interesting. Don't
let your self-consciousness get in the way of sharing cool stuff!

~~~
Tade0
> Also, I think people are quite forgiving of language mistakes if the content
> is interesting.

True, but working with English native speakers I noticed that the level of
engagement I can get from them depends not only on whether my writing is
correct, but also on its style. The same applies to non-native speakers, but
to a lesser extent.

Anyway style is something I know I need to work on if I'm to wow someone else
than a HR person from a local IT company.

~~~
saagarjha
I regularly read blog posts written people who are clearly not native English
speakers, and often they choose to not even use English at all (in which case
I use a translation service). If you content is useful to me, I am perfectly
willing to jump through hoops to get at it. I am much more forgiving of
language mistakes than perfectly-written English blogspam.

------
billfruit
An idea I came across from some thread HN is to try to write a short TIL
blogpost everyday, it might be small trivial thing, bit surely we learn
something new on most days.

------
jjice
I started blogging recently as a way to get things I find interesting written
down somewhere, like how we process "goodbyes" as people and why they're a
good thing. Mostly me just venting things I think are interesting.

I also started journaling recently (which I keep private) and it is a great
way to vent, especially while in quarantine. It also help me clarify problems
to myself by writing them down. It will also be pretty cool to be able to do a
grep on my journal and be able to find my thoughts on the day of an actual
event in the future.

All in all, I think it's great to write, and I think it's something that more
people should try.

------
knzhou
I recently argued [0] why this is a great thing in academia especially.
Getting cutting-edge information out of papers alone is extremely difficult.
Asking experts is ideal, but not everybody can do that. Lecture notes, blog
posts, StackExchange answers, and the like all fill a critical intermediate
role.

0: [https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/148261/do-
you-k...](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/148261/do-you-keep-
your-study-notes-publicly-available/148275#148275)

------
iliekcomputers
I've personally had the feeling for a long time that most of the things I
write don't feel very worthy of entire blog posts. That meant that I just
didn't write anything. However, writing stuff up is a really great way to
actually absorb what you read / study.

So I decided to start taking public notes:
[https://paramsingh.github.io/notes/](https://paramsingh.github.io/notes/)

I don't hold my notes to the high standard of a blog so they can be works in
progress or just random things.

~~~
balladeer
I came across [https://write.as](https://write.as) and it seems great. In fact
I use it to share one-off texts with few of my close friends. But there's no
commenting and I don't want to use Disqus.

Is there any simpler workflow to use this - without Jekyll I mean?

~~~
pjhol
An interesting alternative to Disqus might be Commento.
[https://gitlab.com/commento/commento](https://gitlab.com/commento/commento)

It's a SaaS or self-hosted commenting application written in Go. I also set
this up myself last week
[https://pieterhollander.nl/post/commento](https://pieterhollander.nl/post/commento)
.

------
sova
The points he makes are great, but rather than self-aggrandizement (not to say
all CV building is that,) I have become voracious about knowledge and the
"right way to do things," like voting, public policy, guaranteed income,
governance, philosophy, and I started a newsletter a few days ago [1] if
anyone is interested.

I have used twitter in the past to post a contentious opinion and see what
logical debates result. Most people shoot from the hip and are emotional, but
some people are quite rational and are willing to look at the data and really
understand things. So when looking for consensus, why not make an outlandish
statement and be proven wrong? It's very helpful provided you don't take any
hits personally.

I find that writing and blogging help me decouple my identity from my ideas,
and evaluate them on their merits more objectively.

[1] [https://satisologie.com](https://satisologie.com)

~~~
saagarjha
I don't think you're ever going to hit on the "right way to do" the
complicated things you've mentioned. However, there's nothing wrong with
having discussions about it.

~~~
sova
A good example is voting, because there is a lot of science behind it now. If
you look at different voting systems and the amount of "Bayesian Regret" in
each system, it's clear that Score Voting is the best system. Things like this
I was astonished to discover, because there can be decades between discovery
and consensus.

------
blueridge
I'm working on launching an online "journal" of sorts, focused on publishing
short essays from people who don't ever publish if only because they don't
have editorial support or a place for their writing to live. It would also
serve as a writers group, a way to support and encourage people looking to
improve their writing.

Topics: The aim is to hone in on commentary about books, reading, writing, and
broadly speaking, thinking and self-knowledge. I also want to publish stuff
that is more exploratory and suggestive than conclusive. Maybe each essay ends
with questions? Less tech, more humanities. No ads on the site, can publish
anonymously, simple design, good typography, all text. No frameworks or
scripts or portals, just the basics needed for a great reading experience.

I don't know. Something like that. If this sounds interesting to anyone, would
love to chat.

~~~
risograph
hi, just wanted to send this over to you to have a look. i haven't used the
site myself but came across it recently and it might be related to what you'd
like to build. www.wattpad.com

------
christiansakai
Tangentially related. I've been thinking to create content online. There are a
few things I want to share about, and will think of two media of doing it,
notably blog posts and videos (mostly on youtube). I don't think I want to
engage in twitter/facebook/social media etc.

I see that all these people are using their real name persona on the internet.
In this day and age, I think I need to carefully think about anonymity (maybe
I also want to write about anonymity, blockchain, security etc, it will be an
irony if I don't practice what I preach).

Now my actual question, what is the right balance? How do we create content
while at the same time being anonymous. I think this is even harder on video.
If there's any resource that can point me out here I'd appreciate it.

~~~
SuoDuanDao
The approach I've seen controversial creators I respect take is to make it
difficult to doxx them. So full pseudonym and deniable email address, when
showing it to people you know personally, tell them you'd prefer it not get
linked to you. Most do become known by their real names eventually, but by
then the brand has enough fans that it's not a bad thing.

------
Minor49er
A lot of the more popular blogs seem to be about giving advice to the
audience. "10 Reasons to do X." "Why You Should Y in Z." And so on. It always
made me think that I would have to do the same to draw attention. But the
blogs that I really enjoyed reading were technical dives or even what
someone's day-to-day life is like. Blogs like Rachel by the Bay really hit
this mark for me.

I haven't blogged much myself at all, but I did write about an SVG bug in
Internet Explorer years ago that got a decent amount of attention on
StackOverflow. That was pretty cool.

Similarly, this can apply to other media, like making games or YouTube videos.
OP's advice could be creatively applied to those as well.

------
throw1234651234
Blogging about something useful is extremely difficult. If you:

• A lot of research goes into a new topic, most people paste • Writing useful
examples without errors and confusing extras take forever • Making the text
concise also takes forever

This is why I write rarely. PS - this guy serves as a prime example of someone
who comes up in my search results a lot and never ends up being useful:
[https://www.bennadel.com/blog/2782-route-resolution-using-
fa...](https://www.bennadel.com/blog/2782-route-resolution-using-factory-
functions-vs-services-in-angularjs.htm)

~~~
smacktoward
_> I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it
shorter._

\-- Blaise Pascal ([https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-
letter/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/))

~~~
throw1234651234
One of my favorite quotes. Apparently they can't find the correct attribution
to it, like most good quotes. I first heard it quoted from Mark Twain (/Sam
Clemens).

------
bovermyer
I've started writing down things I learn, notice, or think about. My memory of
those things and related things has started to improve since.

Anecdotal, perhaps, but interesting.

------
cddotdotslash
I'm a huge fan of writing, especially as a form of technical marketing (or
just personal branding). For my last startup, we tried paying a marketing firm
to post articles and the results were terrible. Instead, I took a few hours
each week and wrote very detailed (timely) articles about our backend
technologies, use of different infrastructure products, etc. Those posts got
50-100x more views and a lot more interested customers.

------
nickjj
I'm approaching 300 blog posts (closer to 400 if you count drafts). One thing
I learned over the years is to reduce as much friction as possible to write
your posts.

Also, be careful about scheduling posts. Once you do that, everything changes
from a "pure" thing to something with a potential ulterior motive. So just
understand what you're getting into there.

------
anthk
A big list of blogs:

gopher://sdf.org/1/phlogs

Gopher only, I know, but those have high quality for sure :D.

You won't see a lot of bullshit like Agile and VooDoo management magic in
order how to get your shit done, just real life stories, minimal tools and
great new and legacy software, and a different experience altogether.

------
hachibu
I like the table of contents at the beginning with the links. I'm going to
steal that for my next blog post. The author is a really clear writer, and I
love the table of contents because you can jump around and things are bite-
sized.

------
preem_palver
One tip that helped me a lot was to forget about the audience - write for
yourself. Use blogging as a tool to flush out your thoughts, and truly
understand something. Once that concept clicked, writing once a week has been
a blast!

------
Havoc
I've been slowly building up the tech I need to create a low friction
publishing process (Static site fed by CI/CD type deal).

So yeah definitely planning on blogging more

------
mesaframe
I am thinking on writing notes/journal. But, I have to draw things which I am
not really good at. Does anyone knows about quick drawing solutions?

~~~
xrendan
What kind of drawings? If you're just looking for diagrams,
[https://github.com/mermaid-js/mermaid](https://github.com/mermaid-js/mermaid)
is good.

~~~
mesaframe
Simple hand made drawings. Like a block of array, arrows here and there,
graphs and stuff.

~~~
mkl
TikZ would let you do all that fairly easily with code. Helps if you know
Latex. You'll find a bunch of tutorials and references online (e.g. [1]), but
I think the best source of information is the manual [2], which has tutorial
chapters, and StackExchange. TeXStudio is the best editor for it I know of,
and installing TeXLive will get you every relevant package (and more -
deselect some on installation).

[1]
[https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/PGF/TikZ](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/PGF/TikZ)

[2] [https://pgf-tikz.github.io/pgf/pgfmanual.pdf](https://pgf-
tikz.github.io/pgf/pgfmanual.pdf)

------
koolhead17
I thank Seth Godin for his advice on writing.

Blogging has become a daily ritual in my life for sometime.

wake up > make coffee > write a post.

------
lihaciudaniel
Not every writer can be a big blogger. For example, there is only one Scot
Allexander. If you want to do it as a hobby, it's very good as well.

------
whattheyong
" I write for myself, first."

I love this sentence as well! When I first start out, I write as a mean to add
coherence into my thought process when I am learning something new. Over time,
it is also important to learn how to organize this information that may
provide meaningful insights for my readers. This allows me to 'digest' my
newly acquired knowledge and apply them in my thought process! Here's my blog
that I hope to share with all you readers (:

[https://blog.phuaxueyong.com/](https://blog.phuaxueyong.com/)

I started writing about design patterns as well, and wish to hear from you all
on what are your thoughts on this topic as well. Do leave a comment in my blog
page! (:

[https://blog.phuaxueyong.com/post/2020-05-03-3-more-cloud-
de...](https://blog.phuaxueyong.com/post/2020-05-03-3-more-cloud-design-
pattern)

------
artsyca
Another my work is my hobby cat

~~~
otachack
Kind of, but you don't necessarily have to blog about work-related hobbies.
You can blog on other interests!

