Why blogging

First blog post

As a daily reader of aggregators like Hacker News and various tech blogs, I’ve always been thinking about starting my own blog again. When I say “again” it implies that I have had a blog before. While that’s true, it refers to a time before social media, when having a personal homepage was fun, hard and fascinating.

So why would I, as an average engineer that don’t contribute much to open source, never use Twitter and most certainly don’t post photos of food on Instagram, start a blog? I’ve asked myself that question several times the past 5 years, and never had a good answer. In fact I’ve only come up with good reasons not to start a blog.

Why not get into technical blogging

• I don’t have anything interesting to write
• I don’t want to come across as a pretentious tech-snob
• I can’t compare with some of my favorite tech blogs
• I don’t have the time to write blog posts
• If I start, then I have to commit to continue writing
• …and others

So why?

Technical knowledge retention

One day I came across a blog post (I have tried to locate it, but can’t) that mentioned: In order to really learn something, your should write about it. You will discover that your knowledge is full of assumptions. So after writing about it, even if nobody reads your blog post, you have gained something. And that’s a premise I can stand by. If anybody else find it useful, that’s a cool bonus, but writing for me is the primary goal.

Technical writing skills

Another motivator for me has been that I want to be better at writing communicating. I’ve challenged myself to do more public speaking, starting two years ago. I know it’s usually the other way around - blogging then speaking - but here I am.

I humbly hope that I will follow through and write blog posts on what I’m working on from time to time. If only a couple of posts a year then I still consider it a win for myself.