Is Blogging Still Relevant For Programmers?

Tags: Blogging, Programming

Published on 17 Apr 2024 • 6 min read

Introduction

After three months of daily dedication and constantly repeating to yourself the words, "I'll make it; I just need to keep pushing on," you have completed learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. You are proud of yourself for building three landing pages and a to-do app. So, you decided to pick up a frontend framework to take your skills to the next level, as the webmasters on YouTube and programming forums always suggest.

After two days of watching YouTube videos on "Which is the best frontend framework?" you have finally chosen React.js. Still procrastinating, you spent another lazy day watching YouTube videos on topics like "Who built React.js," "What does it take to learn React.js," "How long does it take to learn React.js," and even watched a documentary on React.js just to "get ready."

A month later, you feel happy and now consider yourself a front-end developer due to your relentless dedication to daily practice. You watched YouTube tutorials on building React.js projects while coding along with the content creator, read up on and coded the examples in the React.js docs, and even built a project yourself from scratch without any help.

Ready to showcase your skills and "make the world a better place," you've decided to build your website. Many developers advised doing so, and you thought it fun and rewarding to have someone Google your name and see your domain show up.

While building your website, the question of whether or not to blog on the website has come up. You have always wanted to teach young developers, document your daily journey in development, and share your life story with the world. But you are not sure if blogging is still a relevant medium. You are questioning if people still read blog posts or if YouTube, programming forums, and social media have replaced them as the new ways people teach and learn skills, document their journeys, and share their life stories. I had similar questions, and I would like to share my thoughts and opinions on this with you to help you overcome your doubts, just like I did.

Why did you initially want to start blogging?

You're not entirely sure why you're being asked this question, but perhaps it's because, as you've grown older, you've become more selective about how you spend your time and energy. If blogging is going to have a place in your life, it needs to be meaningful.

For me, after much thought, I realized that the reason I want to blog is simple:

I frequently have life experiences from which I learn, and I want to share them with you.

The key phrase here is "share them with you." If I only wanted to record my life experiences, I could simply keep a journal. But I want to share them with you because I believe you share similar passions and interests with me, and I hope that you can learn from my experiences, just as I can learn from yours.

You may wonder, "Why go through the trouble of building a website and regularly updating it when social media makes it so easy to share with the world?" While social media platforms are certainly convenient, you don't want your life experiences to be owned by large corporations that don't have your best interests at heart. They can easily change their policies or go out of business, and you could lose your content as a result.

It's important to start with a clear understanding of why you want to blog. Without a clear purpose, you may find it difficult to stay motivated and committed. You don't want me to say this whenever I visit your home on the internet: "Here once lived a great software developer who wanted to share his life experiences with fellow developers but didn't get clear on WHY he wanted to. As a result, his unclear passion could not withstand the difficulties of the world. Long live the dead blog!"

What can blogging do for you as a software developer?

I was curious to know what other software developers before us had been saying and doing about blogging and what was in it for me, so I went up to my browser and did my search. In my findings, I gathered some benefits, and from observation of the software development world, they held up.

• Blogging helps you express yourself creatively.
• Blogging helps you dive deeper into your interests.
• Blogging helps you learn and share at the same time.
• Blogging makes you learn faster.
• Blogging helps you share what you know like a pro.
• Blogging helps you connect with an awesome audience.
• Blogging helps you build connections.
• Blogging swings open doors to opportunities.
• Blogging helps you market yourself and show off your quirks and beliefs.
• Blogging boosts your brand game.

What can blogging not do for you as a software developer?

Of course, embellishment is at the heart and soul of humans when we advocate for something, and the blogging benefits I could gather from these searches also contained some misconceptions, as they don't hold up based on my observation of the software development world.

• Blogging does not make you become a better software developer.
• Blogging does not boost your confidence.
• Blogging about your learning does not show how deep your understanding is of that subject.
• Blogging does not give you a voice in the programming community.
• Blogging does not help build authority in the programming field.
• Blogging does not create a nice passive side-income stream that you wouldn't otherwise have.
• Blogging does not make employers or employees love you.
• Blogging does not make you work from wherever.
• Blogging does not make you your own boss.
• Blogging does not help you start that dream company.

Conclusion

Friend, it's important to remember that our primary focus should be on programming, not blogging. As Marc Andreessen once said, "We will be judged by what we – and our code – have done", not by the chit-chat around it. The saying goes "Those who can't code become influencers," and we don't want blogging to turn us into one.

However, if you have the time and opportunity to blog alongside programming, it can be a valuable gift seeing the benefits it offers, and if you attract a following, cherish it. The best programmers since computer programming became mainstream never got that far.

The future of blogging for us programmers is a mix of creativity, purpose, and passion for making the world a better place through programming. As I conclude, here's a quote I crafted: "Hackers hack, crackers crack, and whiners whine. Be a hacker." Take care.