This post title implies that I am going to convince you to start writing blogs.
That is a lie.
I’m writing this today to put into words why I decided to start. Ultimately, I’m writing this for myself.
Write blogs for yourself
In this day and age when it feels like everyone has already invented everything, it’s hard to prove your worth as a budding software developer, it’s hard for me to prove my worth.
I need to prove my worth to myself first, that’s why I am writing for myself and for no one else. I hope no one else reads these ramblings, in fact. Because I am going to say a lot of stupid things presented in boring ways until I finally figure things out.
Blog posts are actually fun to read
I used to think that writing blog posts was silly, that it was something you did if you were out of touch. If you didn’t know how to make a YouTube video, you wrote blogs.
Oh, how wrong I was.
After spending enough time watching YouTube videos of people reacting to blog posts I realized that I was being silly. These are first hand accounts of others’ experiences. A way to learn specific details that you would normally never know unless you yourself put in the same time into the obscure project. And at least for me it is very hard to dedicate time to a project that I know won’t matter.
I realized there is value in writing about something that people can learn from or relate to. And knowing full well that I am a terrible writer I still want something to look back on when I’m (hopefully) a much better programmer in the future.
Document your life
When I know I can document my experiences working on silly projects, I feel more inclined to work on them more. To experiment. To try reinventing a wheel that I know has been perfected by software developers a thousand times before me.
The only way to give these things any meaning is to document what I learned, if for no other reason than to have a list of all the useless stuff I made.
An excuse to ignore AI
Learning a new programming tool has been hard for me ever since AI came around. I constantly critique it for doing things the wrong way when I use it on pre-AI projects. But when learning a new language or framework I trust it, why? (Gell-Mann Amnesia effect?)
So I have taken to ignoring AI when the purpose is to learn. If I do something wrong a thousand times that’s at least a thousand things to document, to write about, to blog. Nobody cares about yet another mediocre game engine, compiler, web server, but there is one person at least that cares about what I learned (me).
I want an excuse to program for fun, and at least get something out of it.