
Ask HN: My wife is learning to program. Would you read her blog about this? - maxaf
Now that the baby is getting older, my wife has decided to go back to work, and what kind of work is better than writing code for a living?<p>She&#x27;s not an absolute beginner; some classes in college and experience working in a data analyst role years ago taught her some basic technical skills. These aren&#x27;t enough to actually work in our industry, but form a sufficient basis to take the next few steps towards becoming a programmer.<p>My wife wants to write up her experiences as she goes. She&#x27;s going to do it anyway, for the sake of posterity as well as showing our daughter how it&#x27;s done. The question we have is this:<p>Would anyone in the large blue world be interested in reading something like this in blog form? She isn&#x27;t envisioning a high-volume publication, more like an occasional diary entry detailing experiences &amp; challenges, triumphs &amp; the occasional crisis.<p>What say you, fellow hackers? Is there value in this writing?
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pedalpete
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?

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brudgers
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.

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drakonka
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!

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vkb
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!

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Someone
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.

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bbcbasic
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.

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percept
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.

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

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e19293001
Yes. In addition, take a look at this blog
[http://sachachua.com/blog/](http://sachachua.com/blog/)

