Why write a blog? What’s wrong with you? Cause it’s awesome. Where else can you practice programming, writing a specification on what you did, be criticized for your work, improve your trade, and remember what you did last week (because sometimes it’s hard to remember what I did last week). Here I want to give a few examples of why to write a blog and what it will do to help you grow as a professional.
Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was stupid, too. Writing is for the noobs in college and those bums who give me requirements for software. But, if you are at a mature company, they ask you for your input. That input that they want is not coding nerd talk, they want business cases for why you need something, want to change something, or if you want to be promoted. Certainly most of my day is filled with programming, but how do I communicate with other developers to use this super awesome API I built? Writing out your knowledge in a design document.
Ok, so now I start writing this blog, where is this awesome benefit? You have to start advertising around. Start with your co-workers and other developers you know. Once you get them on board with your writing, start adding it to articles on stack overflow. This will help you solve both, others’ problems, and give you some ideas of future content to write about. The more people you get on your blog, the more it gives you the other benefit, peer review. They will tell you how good or bad your article is, how well your arguments are, or even how bad you spell. But with all this, you will have a better idea of what to fix, so at work you can demand better tools, resources and be the go to guy for expressing ideas. Don’t forget that this also gives you the reason to demand a bigger raise, when you show the list of articles and new technology you learned throughout the year. The blog also sets you apart from others, which is one thing you need to do when looking for other opportunities. What have you worked on? Show them your blog!
Outside of work, blogs are great for keeping track of your own projects you are working on. Whether it is open source or just dicking around with a technology, you could be building up the community with more information on the subject. I do plan on writing some articles about the raspberry pi which has nothing to do with my main job at work. But I hope it helps someone, and at the very least a reminder for me that this technology is out there.
How do I get started? Easy, go to Google and get a blogger article started. Do you need to build your own? Not really, but I used this website as an opportunity to test out my web design skills. So whether it is professional, personal, or just curious, try to write a blog. You will be surprised how much more professional you will become afterwards.