How I started blogging and why you should start too

18 Jul 2020 #career #writing

Once upon a time, a junior engineer at his first job

Everything started with my first professional job.

I was a junior software engineer, the least experienced on the team. I had just finished reading The Clean Code. And I wanted to rewrite all the code I had worked with.

I had a lot to share with my colleagues about coding. But I was the new guy. So I came up with “Daily Tips.” It was a weekly email with a single tip about writing better code.

Those tips came from what I had seen in the book and in the code I worked with. For example, use boolean variables instead of integers for flags. I started to accumulate some of these tips on my personal computer.

A few years later, those tips ended up in my presentations for newcomers at my next job.

The first post

The real starting point was a few years later in my second job.

After getting tired of writing log statements to chase down bugs, I went to the Internet to see what was out there. There must be a better way!–I thought.

I found Fody, a solution using Aspect-Oriented Programming. I put up a proof of concept and showed it to my team lead. Unfortunately, we ended up doing something else. But I had my findings. And I didn’t want to lose that time and that how-to behind an unread email. My blog and its first post were born.

Next posts

After that, from time to time, I started to share my learning and my experiences.

I started to write about the bugs that literally gave me headaches, the resources I used to learn languages and frameworks, and the notes from the books I read. And here you are, 30 posts after that first post.

Your turn

You don’t need to wait to be a well-known figure in the tech field to have a blog.

A blog is a means to share your learning. To learn in public. To share your insights. To show your work. That will make your blog unique.

I don’t have anything to write about?–you said. Have you learned something new? Share that. Share the resources you used to learn it.

Probably, next time you’re Googling something, you will find your own blog posts.

Thanks for reading!