A Better Way to Blog

I might be too much of a perfectionist. No seriously. I rewrote that first sentence like 5 times before settling on that one. Last year I started a blog, and since then wrote a total of… drum roll please… 1 blog post. I think it’s time for a change.

You’re Not Good Enough

If we’re being honest, the rise of social media has a lot of downsides. One of which, is making way more devs have some serious imposter syndrome. You’re a lot more visible if you have a perfect commit history, ship 3 successful SaaS projects weekly, all while using Arch, btw.

We all have the perfect dev in mind. Someone who we strive to be like. The truth is that they don’t really exist.

Good software takes time to make. Skill takes time to perfect. And social media greatly undersells the amount of effort it takes to get there. It obfuscates the process and showcases only the results and achievements, because that’s what draws the biggest reaction. That one person is actually a team, and that extraordinary project is built on dozens of mundane ones that came before it. Success is built on failure.

Blog Worthy

It’s funny to think back at the origins of social media.

The internet used to just be a collection of websites. Blogs. And people would post some insane stuff by today’s standards. The concept of your internet footprint didn’t exist, and communities were relatively small. Sites grew through word of mouth, not recommendation algorithms. Social media came as a solution, to make discoverability and connection easier.

Social media made blogging much more accessible to the average person, and with accessibility comes scale. And social media platform blew up in popularity. Maintaining a regular blog is much more difficult than just creating a twitter account. So naturally good old fashioned blogging is done primarily by people who are able to put in the effort, and casual blogging is slowly starting to disappear. It sets a certain societal quality bar for blog posts. If it’s not “blog worthy” maybe it’s not worth posting.

Create In Public

I noticed that I just never have something blog worthy to write about. But rules were meant to be broken.

You never stop learning in life. Especially earlier in your career. Starting my software engineering journey just a few years ago means that whenever I look back at my previous work, it usually leads to thoughts of “what in the world was I thinking” or “this code is absolute garbage”. I wanted my blog to showcase my skill. Why would I showcase something that shows a lack of it?

I’m trying to take a different approach this time around. Before, I was only eating the best looking fruit, and leaving myself hungry. I’m beginning to learn that if anything, there’s a lot of value in the imperfect. It showcases the journey rather than the result.

The juiciest fruits are the ones that fall from the tree and collect dirt and scratches. In the same way, the best devs are the ones that tried and failed a lot, and show the ability to learn and improve.

About This Blog

This blog was made with the intention of embracing the mentality of “Creating In Public”.

I have a bajillion side projects. Some of which I’ll probably never finish. Most of which are probably not that interesting or good.

Most of the things I wanna write about are not blog worthy. They either don’t have enough content for a full post, or require context I can’t be bothered to write down especially.

Although they’re not worthy by themselves, their importance in the timeline of my software engineering journey cannot be understated. And thus, I want to be able to showcase them.

The posts in this blog are split into notes and posts (visually - note cards and polaroids). Each post can be assigned a topic.

A topic is a timeline of posts. It is meant to shift the focus from the content of the post, to the change of my thinking about it over time. The idea is to allow me to post my thoughts without having to worry about what I’m saying being flawless. And if I made a mistake, I can just add a new note to the topic, which will highlight the process I took.

Hopefully being able to see me improve and learn over time will help someone else with their journey as well.

Hashtag Inspo

This idea isn’t original. Quite frankly the way I worded it sounds a bit pretentious even to me.

I want to take moment to shout out the people who inspired these ideas. One day I hope to be better than all of you, and inspire you right back.

Also hopefully none of these people get cancelled and then I like - look bad.

First, NoBoilerplate, for a lot of borrowed philosophy, and in particular the idea of the cult of done.
https://youtu.be/bJQj1uKtnus

Second, ThePrimeagen, who shares his experiences and opinions. In particular how he’s always open to the idea of being wrong, and embraces the difficulty of learning in a way I don’t see a lot of people do.
https://youtu.be/r6EXZcTJyaA

Last, The O- I mean, Theo. Specifically for advocating for the idea of “failing fast, getting it good later”, and none of his controversial opinions that make Twitter mad.
https://youtu.be/3h7Lc85RDLo