5 Reasons Why Every Developer Should Write Blogs?
“A word after a word after a word is power.”
ByPayal Mittal
Writing is an art that opens up your mind. Everyone should write once in a while. But you need not be a writer to write something. Anyone can write at any time.
However, for those who wish to be a good writer, it’s a long way but, mind it, it’s not tough. It takes deliberate practice for years along with lots of reading and writing to emerge as a good writer.
But as the developers are our technical warriors, it is necessary for them to often write to share this knowledge. It opens up their mind to broader aspects of programming.
In this blog, I will emphasize the benefits of writing for developers. They need not write perfectly, but they must write once in a while.
Writing and Programming are far too different things. Writing is about creativity and programming is about logic and science. But both have one common thing- structure and syntax. The basis of both writing and programming is the structure of the creation.
While programming is not required for writing, writing is undoubtedly an important tool in programming. Let’s see how writing can be of great assistance for developers-
Better Communication
Among many benefits, the first and foremost one is the obvious improvement and enhancement in the writing and communication skills of the developer.
Programming is not only about writing code. It also includes collaborating, debating, presenting your ideas, communicating with your peer, client, manager, boss, etc.
Writing will help you sharpen your vocabulary, debating skills, and speaking out your ideas aloud.
Knowing something is far easier than explaining it. To explain things, you need to speak up your mind. And to speak up your mind, you must know how to articulate thoughts into words.
That’s where writing helps.
To convert your thoughts into words.
If you don’t know how to do that, you should start with something very simple. Don’t think about what you’re writing, just write whatever it is in your mind. There will be plenty of time to edit it later.
This skill will provide you an upper hand everywhere. With every blog you write, you are getting better. You will realize that you are no more conscious of speaking up in a meeting, no more afraid of giving a presentation in front of the whole office.
Whether you’re writing an important email or communicating with a client from afar, your writing skills will aid you everywhere.
Earlier while you were worried about how to write, now you will be thinking about how to write better. This is the power of writing.
Better Documentation
Writing documentation improves the design of your code. Talking through your API and design decisions on paper allows you to think about them in a more formalized way.
Documenting things is a part of every developer’s job whether it is to explain a project, its database, and APIs, or the management part. They regularly require to explain their work in the documentation or a helping guide that makes sense to the users. It makes writing even more important for them.
When you release your code, it’s a wonderful feeling when people use it. But it needs a detailed explanation of every piece to save everyone from the frustration of its complexity. This is where ‘documentation’ plays its role.
Documentation is the process of ‘postmortem’ of the code. It means to explain each and everything about it and answering all the Why-s, What-s, and How-s questions.
It’s up to you how much thought you give to it. The better you are at writing, the better you’ll be able to document your code.
Learning Experience
Technical writing is a completely different aspect of writing. While it takes creativity and imagination in normal writing, an extra factor known as ‘technical knowledge’ is required to write technical blogs.
Though writers can write about everything. But wouldn’t it be better, that someone who has raw knowledge about the subject shares his thoughts about it, rather than a conventional writer who learns about it from multiple platforms and then re-writes the same thing?
When you write, you learn things. When I write about technical topics, I learn about them which I couldn’t have otherwise.
I remember my childhood, my teacher used to say in our class that if you can’t learn things, write them down. Writing is the best way to learn. So, I used to write down the paragraphs, I couldn’t memorize.
This was about the writing part. Now let’s discuss the research part.
While researching on a topic, a writer comes across many different topics, opinions, facts, etc., and gets to know extra things besides the topic.
Now and then, when we find some interlinks about the topics, we were looking for but couldn’t exactly put a finger at and think “oh, right! I can also include this thing in my blog.”
So, you see? While writing a blog, we come across many different dimensions of a topic, some of them we find too fascinating, and can’t resist writing about them.
It is called learning.
When we write, we are not trying to impress the audience with our language, rather we try to communicate with them, we share our ideas through the writing.
Sharing Knowledge
Your experience with programming can provide guidance to young developers through your blog.
Remember the time when you just entered into your career as a greenie developer. You read so many articles to guide you about the right tools, technologies, techniques, direction,
The greatest help was either from senior developers or a step-by-step guide shared by someone through his blog. When was the last time you read a blog about something that was a big help in your project?
Well, it wouldn’t be available if the other person hasn’t thought about sharing his work. Now, would it??
In this era, Google has been an inseparable part of our lives. Every one of us uses Google every day multiple times to know about things.
But it isn’t Google that manifests this information on itself and tells us about things like some magic, rather the people that make themselves time to write down their experiences and knowledge to their best and upload this information on it.
“Write what should not be forgotten.” — Isabel Allende
Your knowledge is your legacy.
You might think your work isn’t that important to be published, but you never know who might be in need of just what you do. Your blog can help them in some way.
Or you can share the mistakes you made in your career, what they cost you, and how did you overcome them. Don’t you think that everyone should learn a lesson from your experience?
Make an Online Presence
You may practice blogging for many reasons as we have already discussed, but it is also a great way to gather an audience. It helps you make an online presence, which further helps you to get involved with the developer community, connect with other developers and writers.
Having a portfolio of your work throughout the years is something that can be proved a milestone to your career. Your potential clients and recruiter can learn about your life’s work and skills through your blog.
For freelance developers, the consistent online presence will promote you and get you a big hand over huge career opportunities.
Tell me one thing, which is better- to have a resume claiming that you have an expertise in ReactJS or pointing towards your blog where you have a number of blogs explaining your consistent progress in ReactJS throughout these years? I guess, you agree with me if I chose the latter.
Yes. Telling about your work is not as impressive as showing it.
Your blog will be your virtual resume, you can attach its link in your resume or bring it up to the interviewer. In any case, it is more likely that you get the job than other candidates.
Summing Up
Some developers claim to be too busy to write, others don’t find it much beneficial. Well, I hope I was able to inspire you a little bit to start writing.
You should write whenever you can, once a week or twice a month, as you find suitable, and I’m certain that when you will look back after a year or so, you’ll be grateful that you started writing at that time.
If you liked my blog, then don’t forget to hit some claps 👏.
Thanks for reading and keep writing!!