We interviewed a dozen(ish) expert tech bloggers over the past year to share perspectives and tips beyond Writing for Developers. The idea: ask everyone the same set of questions and hopefully see an interesting range of responses emerge. They did. Writing for Developers Writing for Developers Writing for Developers You can read all the interviews here. We’ll continue the interview series (and maybe publish some book spinoff posts too). But first, we want to pause and compare how the first cohort of interviewees responded to specific questions. read all the interviews here Here’s how everyone answered the question “Why did you start blogging – and why do you continue?” Why did you start blogging – and why do you continue? Aaron Francis Aaron Francis Aaron Francis I started blogging as a way to get attention for a product that I was working on. And while that product never really worked out, I started getting interest from people that wanted me to come work for them, either as a freelancer or as a full-time employee. And since then, I have realized what a cheat code it is to have a public body of work that people can just passively stumble upon. It’s like having a bunch of people out there advocating for you at all times, even while you’re sleeping. antirez antirez antirez I don’t know exactly, but in general, I want to express my interest in things I like, in my passions. It was not some kind of calculation where I said: oh, well, blogging would benefit my career. I just needed to do it. Charity Majors Charity Majors Charity Majors I started writing at a big life inflection point -- the brief period after I left Facebook but before I started Honeycomb. I had started giving talks, and found it surprisingly rewarding, but I’m not an extrovert and I’ve always considered myself more of a writer-thinker than a talker-thinker, so I thought I might as well give it a try. There are very few things in life that I am prouder of than the body of writing I have developed over the past 10 years. I have had a yearly goal of publishing about one longform piece of writing per month. I don’t think I’ve ever actually hit that goal, but some years I have come close! When I look back over things I have written, I feel like I can see myself growing up, my mental health improving, I’m getting better at taking the long view, being more empathetic, being less reactive... I’ve never graduated from anything in my life, so to me, my writing kind of externalizes the progress I’ve made as a human being. It’s meaningful to me. Eric Lippert Eric Lippert Eric Lippert I started my blog, which is now at ericlippert.com, more than 20 years ago. I worked for the Developer Division at Microsoft at the time. As developers working on tools for other developers just like us, we felt a lot of empathy for our customers and were always looking for feedback on what their wants and needs were. But the perception of Microsoft by those customers was that the company was impersonal, secretive, uncommunicative, and uncaring. When blogs started really taking off in the early 2000s, all employees were encouraged to reach out to customers and put a more human, open, and empathetic face on the company, and I really went for that opportunity. ericlippert.com I was on the scripting languages team at the time, and our public-facing documentation was sparse. Our documentation was well-written and accurate, but there was only so much work that our documentation “team” – one writer – could do. I decided to focus my blog on the stuff that was missing from the documentation: odd corners of the language, why we’d made certain design decisions over others, that sort of thing. My tongue-in-cheek name for it was “Fabulous Adventures In Coding.” At its peak, I think it was the second most popular blog on MSDN that was run by an individual rather than a team. For most of the last decade I’ve been at Facebook, which discourages employees blogging about their work, so my rate of writing dropped off precipitously then. And since leaving Facebook a couple years ago, I haven’t blogged much at all. I do miss it, and I might pick it up again this winter. I really enjoy connecting with an audience. Editor’s note: He’s now writing a book. Editor’s note: Editor’s note: He’s now writing a book. writing a book fasterthanlime fasterthanlime fasterthanlime I genuinely cannot remember why I started, because I’ve been blogging for about 15 years! That’s just what the internet was like back then? It wasn’t weird for people to have their own website — it was part of maintaining your online identity. We’re starting to see that come back in that post-Twitter era, folks value having their own domain name more, and pick up blogging again. I can say, though, that in 2019 I started a Patreon to motivate me to take writing more seriously — I’m reluctant to call it “blogging” at this point because some of my longer articles are almost mini-books! Some can take a solid hour to go through. At the time, I was sick of so many articles glossing over particulars: I made it my trademark to go deep into little details, and not to be afraid to ask questions. Glauber Costa Glauber Costa Glauber Costa I started blogging years ago at ScyllaDB. I was initially forced to do it, but I ended up really enjoying it. [This is strikingly similar to Sarna’s “Stockholm Syndrome” story in Chapter 1 of the book]. blogging years ago at ScyllaDB Sarna’s “Stockholm Syndrome” story I’ve always liked teaching people and I saw that technical blogging was a way to do that…at scale. As I was learning new things, often working with previously unexplored technologies and challenges, blogging gave me this opportunity to teach a large audience of people about what I discovered. I kept doing it because it actually works. It really does reach a lot of people. And it’s very rewarding when you find that your blog is getting people to think differently, maybe even do something differently. does Gunnar Morling Gunnar Morling Gunnar Morling I started blogging for a couple of reasons really. First, it just helps me to take note of things I learned and which I might want to refer to again in the future, like how to prevent ever-growing replication slots in Postgres. I figured, instead of writing things like that down just for myself, I could make these notes available on a blog so others could benefit from them, too. Then, I like to explore and write about technologies such as Java, OpenJDK Flight Recorder, or Apache Kafka. Some posts also distill the experience from many years, for instance discussing how to do code reviews or writing better conference talk abstracts. Oftentimes, folks will add their own thoughts in a comment, from which I can then learn something new again–so it’s a win for everyone. prevent ever-growing replication slots in Postgres Java OpenJDK Flight Recorder Apache Kafka how to do code reviews writing better conference talk abstracts Another reason for blogging is to spread the word about things I’ve been working on, such as kcctl 🐻, a command-line client for Kafka Connect. Such posts will, for instance, introduce a new release or discuss a particular feature or use case and they help to increase awareness for a project and build a community around it. Or they might announce efforts such as the One Billion Row coding challenge I did last year. Finally, some posts are about making the case for specific ideas, say, continuous performance regression testing, or how Kafka Connect could be reinvisioned in a more Kubernetes-native way. such as kcctl 🐻 One Billion Row coding challenge continuous performance regression testing reinvisioned in a more Kubernetes-native way Overall — and this is why I keep doing it — blogging is a great way for me to express my thoughts, ideas, and learnings, and share them with others. It allows me to get feedback and input on new projects, and it’s an opportunity for helping as well as learning from others. Jeff Atwood Jeff Atwood Jeff Atwood I love blogging – it’s how I got to where I am. Steve McConnell‘s book Code Complete is what inspired me to start blogging. His voice was just so human. Instead of the traditional chest-thumping about “My algorithm is better than your algorithm,” it was about “Hey, we’re all fallible humans writing software for other fallible humans.” I thought, “Oh my God, this is humanistic computing.” I loved it! I knew I had to write like that too. That’s what launched me on my journey. Steve McConnell Code Complete Code Complete Now more than ever, I think it’s important to realize that we’ve given everyone a Gutenberg printing press that reaches every other human on the planet. At first blush, that sounds amazing. Wow, everybody can talk to everybody! But then the terror sets in: Oh, my God. Everybody can talk to everybody – this is a nightmare. Gutenberg printing press Wow, everybody can talk to everybody! Oh, my God. Everybody can talk to everybody – this is a nightmare I think blogs are important because it’s a structured form of writing. Sadly, chat tends to dominate now. I want people to articulate their thoughts, to really think about what they’re saying – structure it, have a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It doesn’t have to be super long. However, chat breaks everything up into a million pieces. You have these interleaved conversations where people are just typing whatever pops into their brain, sometimes with 10 people doing that at the same time. How do you create a narrative out of this? How do you create a coherent story out of chat? I think blogging is a better mental exercise. Tell the story of what happened to you, and maybe we can learn from it. Maybe you can learn from your own story, perhaps from the whole rubber ducking aspect of it. As you’re explaining it to yourself, you’re also creating a public artifact that can benefit others who might have the same problem or a related story. And it’s your story – what’s unique about you. I want to hear about you as a person – your unique experience and what you’ve done and what you’ve seen. That’s what makes humanity great. And I think blogs are an excellent medium for that. rubber ducking your you’ve you’ve There’s certainly a place for video, there’s a place for chat. These tools all have their uses, but use the appropriate tool for the appropriate job. I think blogs are a very, very versatile tool in terms of median length, telling a story, and sharing it with the public. If you look at the history of humanity, the things that have really changed the world have been in writing – books, novels, opinion pieces, even blogs. The invention of language was important, but the invention of writing was so much bigger. With writing, you didn’t have to depend on one person being alive long enough to tell the story over and over. You could write it down and then it could live on forever. I encourage everyone to write, even if you write only for yourself. I think it’s better if you write in public because you can get feedback that way. You can learn so much from the feedback – learn that others feel the same way, learn about aspects you didn’t think about, etc. But it’s scary. I get it – people are afraid of putting themselves out there. Write for just you if you want, but write… just write. Matt Butcher Matt Butcher Matt Butcher I first started blogging in earnest back in the early 2000s because I was at university and wanted to share that experience with the rest of my family. Somewhere along the line, I started a second blog to record (mainly for myself) the technologies and tools I was learning. These early tech blog posts were pretty basic. I’d learn a new sed trick, and write a couple hundred words about it. I’d try a new code editor, take a screenshot, and write my basic impressions. Embarrassingly, sometimes my blog posts were terribly inaccurate. I once wrote one on optimizing tree walking algorithms that was totally wrong. But I just updated it later with a note that said I’d learned more and now realized there were better ways of doing things. sed In those early days, I never used any analytics or anything. I had no idea if anyone ever read what I wrote. Then one day, a friend of mine got really into SEO and asked if I would set up Google Analytics and share with him so he could learn a bit. I was utterly shocked by what we learned: My blog had a ton of traffic, and some of the most basic posts (like the one about sed) were perennially popular. sed I’ve blogged on and off since then. These days, I mainly post on the Fermyon blog. And those posts are more theoretical than my early how-to focused posts. Fermyon blog Phil Eaton Phil Eaton Phil Eaton My shameless goal when I started blogging in 2015 was to become a regular on the front of Hacker News (HN) because I got the sense that it would be good for my career. And I enjoyed the type of posts that made a great fit for HN; posts that were a little crazy yet taught you something useful. After becoming a manager in 2017, I realized the importance and value of writing for the sake of communicating and my focus on writing shifted from “writing about zany explorations” to “writing as a means for teaching myself a topic, or solidifying my understanding of the topic.” I started to notice, observing both myself and coworkers, that we developers let so many educational opportunities pass without recording the results. What a waste! Not only is writing about what you learn good for your own understanding and your team’s understanding and for the internet’s understanding, it’s good marketing for you and the company you work for. Good marketing in the sense that when people see someone write a useful blog post, they think “that person is cool, and the company they work for must also be cool; I want to work with them or work for that company or buy from that company.” So there’s this confluence of reasons that make blogging so obviously worth the time. Preston Thorpe Preston Thorpe Preston Thorpe Honestly, I don’t think I made a conscious decision to start blogging. I just remember being involved in open source projects and my story wasn’t really out there yet. And it felt odd that nobody knew my situation. I didn’t want to just flat out randomly tell people that I’m incarcerated. So I decided that I’d write my story down for anyone to find if they came across my profile. I really did not expect for many people to actually read it, so it was pretty shocking to see it on the front page of HN a couple days after it was published. my story I try my best to keep writing, although I don’t write as often as I should. Writing an in-depth technical blog post about a feature built or a problem solved allows me to fully absorb and understand it even better than just implementing it, so this is another reason I feel like I will continue to write. It serves as both personal motivation to more deeply understand something I am working on, as well as a way to share that knowledge with others. Sam Rose Sam Rose Sam Rose I started blogging about tech in my final year of university. The earliest posts on http://samwho.dev, the ones from 2011, were written at this time. I’d heard that having an online presence would help me get a job, so I started writing about the things I was learning. http://samwho.dev I wrote sporadically for years, most of my posts only getting a trickle of traffic, but I did have a few modestly successful ones. https://samwho.dev/blog/the-birth-and-death-of-a-running-program/ did well and even ended up as part of the Georgia Tech CS2110 resources list. One of the lecturers, who has since retired, emailed me in 2013 asking if he could use it. I was concerned because the post had swearing in it, but he said “swearing is attention getting and helps the reader stay alert.” https://samwho.dev/blog/the-birth-and-death-of-a-running-program/ The blog posts I’ve become known for, the ones with lots of visual and interactive bits, started in the first half of 2023. I’d long admired the work of https://ciechanow.ski/ and wanted to see if I could apply his style to programming. It’s working well so far! https://ciechanow.ski/ As for why I continue, I’ve been gainfully employed for a long time now, so my initial motivations for writing are long gone. I think my blog does help when I have conversations with employers, but that’s not the goal anymore. I have this dream of being a teacher. I’ve dabbled in many forms of teaching: teaching assistant in university for some of my lecturers, mentoring in commercial and personal capacities, moderating learning communities, volunteering at bootcamps and kids’ groups. What if I could just… teach for a living? I’m trying to make use of the attention these blog posts are getting to see if I can make steps towards doing just that. Tanel Poder Tanel Poder Tanel Poder Over the years, I had accumulated a number of useful scripts and techniques for troubleshooting the common OS & database problems I had encountered. At first, I created the blog (on June 18, 2007) as a lookup table for my future self. I uploaded all my open source tools to my blog and wrote articles about the more interesting troubleshooting scenarios. When I visited a customer to solve a problem, we could just copy & paste relevant scripts and commands from my blog. That way, I didn’t have to show up with a USB stick and try to get it connected to the internal network first. June 18, 2007 Why do I continue? There’s so much cool stuff and interesting problems to write about. When writing, you have to do additional research to make sure your understanding is good enough. That’s the fun part. Systems are getting more complex, so you need to find new ways to “stay systematic” when troubleshooting problems and not go with trial & error and guesswork. These kinds of topics are my favorite, how to measure the right things, from the right angle, at the right time – so that even new unforeseen problems would inevitably reveal their causes to you via numbers and metrics, without any magic needed. good enough What makes me really happy is when people contact me and say that they were able to solve completely different problems that I hadn’t even seen, on their own, with the aid of the tools and systematic troubleshooting advice I have in my blog. Thorsten Ball Thorsten Ball Thorsten Ball I published my first blog post on thorstenball.com in 2012. It’s this one about implementing autocompletion using Redis. I don’t know exactly why I started the blog, but, looking back, I think the main motivation was to share something I was proud of. It was a cool bit of code, it took me a bit to figure out, I learned a lot in the process, and I wanted to share the excitement. this one why At that time, I was also a junior software developer, having recently finished my first internship, trying to switch from studying philosophy into being an engineer and, I think, there was also a bit of “my blog can be a CV” aspect to it. Back then, a friend had told me: you don’t need a degree to get a job as a software engineer, all you need to do is to show that you can do the job, because, trust me, he said, there’s a lot of people who have degrees but can’t do the job. I figured that having a blog with which I can share what I learned, what I did, well, that’s a way to show that I can do the job. Now, I don’t think a lot of recruiters have read my blog, but I still believe there’s something to it: you’re sharing with the world what you do, what you learned, how you think — that’s a good thing in and of itself, and even if someone only takes a brief look at your blog before they interview you, I think that can help. But, I also have to admit that I’ve been writing on the internet in one form or another, since the early 2000s, when I was a teenager. I had personal websites and blogs since I was 14 years old. I shared tutorials on web forums. There’s just something in me that makes me want to share stuff on the internet. Nowadays I mostly write my newsletter, Register Spill, which I see as a different form of blogging, and for that newsletter, I have a few reasons: Register Spill I enjoy the writing. Well, okay, I enjoy having written. But, in general: I’m proud of writing something that’s good. I’ve enjoyed tweeting a lot, but in the past few years the social media landscape has become so fractured that I decided to create a place of my own, a place where people can subscribe and follow me, where I can potentially take their emails and send them newsletters even if the platform decides to shut down. Writing is thinking. I like sitting down and ordering my thinking in order to write something. The feelings of “I want to write something” and “I want to really think through this topic and share it” are similar for me. I enjoy the writing. Well, okay, I enjoy having written. But, in general: I’m proud of writing something that’s good. I enjoy the writing. Well, okay, I enjoy having written. But, in general: I’m proud of writing something that’s good. I’ve enjoyed tweeting a lot, but in the past few years the social media landscape has become so fractured that I decided to create a place of my own, a place where people can subscribe and follow me, where I can potentially take their emails and send them newsletters even if the platform decides to shut down. I’ve enjoyed tweeting a lot, but in the past few years the social media landscape has become so fractured that I decided to create a place of my own, a place where people can subscribe and follow me, where I can potentially take their emails and send them newsletters even if the platform decides to shut down. Writing is thinking. I like sitting down and ordering my thinking in order to write something. The feelings of “I want to write something” and “I want to really think through this topic and share it” are similar for me. Writing is thinking. I like sitting down and ordering my thinking in order to write something. The feelings of “I want to write something” and “I want to really think through this topic and share it” are similar for me.
