Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#241

Post by STLCajun » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 7:15 PM UTC

I've had many personal websites over the years, but they all eventually get forgotten, and get stale over time... eventually getting deleted and replaced when I come up with a new idea or want to play with some new web technology.

I think it just comes with the fact that I wasn't really doing anything interesting career-wise that a million other people haven't done already. However, my fascination with modern AI technology has got me ready to start either blogging or possibly vlogging again just to open up the discussions and get my thoughts and questions out there.

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#242

Post by orsenthil » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 7:16 PM UTC

Helped to me reflect into my areas of interests, interests that changed over time, interests that remained, and helped me reflect or realize on my core values as a person. I wrote for myself most of time. I spun off some projects[1] based on repetitive patterns I had seen in my blog.

[1]: https://github.com/orsenthil/fortune-browser-extension

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#243

Post by jsejcksn » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 7:16 PM UTC

A blog might also simply be a contribution to readers — distilling insights which required considerably more time to acquire than might be spent consuming their documentation.

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#244

Post by tppiotrowski » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 7:17 PM UTC

When I run into a problem I need to solve, I will document it on my blog and hope Google will surface it to others having a similar issue. I also like to document my backpacking and climbing trips. There's no real theme. I write for fun and there's no contact information so it's never led to a job or anything like that.

Doing OSS on Github or Tweeting leads to more business opportunities in my mind.

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#245

Post by joshcanhelp » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 7:21 PM UTC

xena wrote: post #12

I've been running a blog at https://xeiaso.net for almost a decade now. It has been the single best decision I have ever made in my career. It allows me to skip technical screening interviews. It has made interviewing at companies _easy_ because I have _already proven_ that I understand what I'm talking about. Learning how to write well also makes it so much easier to explain things succinctly, especially when workin…

Your blog always blows me away with how different and fun it is. I only dream of being that authentic online. I love the call-outs from the specific personalities. So great!

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#246

Post by throwwwaway69 » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 7:34 PM UTC

abhaynayar wrote: post #236

tricky wrote: post #123

There is an extensive network of caves under my city that were used by beer breweries in the 1800's to store beer. They are all but inaccessible, and, at the time, kind of a myth. Most people didn't believe they still existed. I was fascinated by this and I compiled as much information as I could find on my personal website in the early 2000's. One day I received an email, "do you want to go into the caves? I know so…

It's amazing how I'd never heard the word "spelunk" before today, and now in the span of the last few hours, I've heard it multiple times in three different contexts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion#Working_Mem...

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#247

Post by housecarpenter » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 7:37 PM UTC

Writing my blog (https://thehousecarpenter.wordpress.com/) has helped me learn things because it provides me with a concrete motivation: instead of having the rather vague and amorphous goal of "learn about X", I can think of my goal as "learn enough about X to write a blog post about it". That's always been the idea behind having the blog, and it's worked decently for that purpose. It hasn't helped me at all with my career or with connecting with people, but that's unsurprising as I've never cared to optimize for those goals.

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#248

Post by throwwwaway69 » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 7:38 PM UTC

kkoncevicius wrote: post #194

OK I will be the party-pooper this time. Blogging is a waste of time. You see a website with 100 blog posts. That could easily be 1000 hours of work. And then if you ask such person if he/she gained something from it the answer will be of course. The relevant question should be - was it worth the effort? Could they have gotten the same thing with less effort in some other way? When/if you are starting to blog you sho…

What if I'm blogging to demonstrate knowledge and thought around professional topics with the intent to help demonstrate to future employers I know what I'm talking about?

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#249

Post by jslind » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 7:39 PM UTC

mjb wrote: post #9

I've been maintaining my blog ( https://brooker.co.za/blog/ ) for just over a decade, and I continue to do it for a couple of reasons. - I often blog about research, which has started several very interesting conversations with academics and industry researchers, and even some very fruitful collaborations. Mostly I cover systems, database, and distributed systems work. - I believe that the ability to write well is sk…

I work lower in your same org tree with DDB and TxS and enjoy reading your blog. Gives insight into more tenured engineers and is good motivation for me as well. I am just kicking off my blog and hopefully I will have it go a decade as well.

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#250

Post by kkoncevicius » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 7:45 PM UTC

throwwwaway69 wrote: post #248

kkoncevicius wrote: post #194

OK I will be the party-pooper this time. Blogging is a waste of time. You see a website with 100 blog posts. That could easily be 1000 hours of work. And then if you ask such person if he/she gained something from it the answer will be of course. The relevant question should be - was it worth the effort? Could they have gotten the same thing with less effort in some other way? When/if you are starting to blog you sho…

What if I'm blogging to demonstrate knowledge and thought around professional topics with the intent to help demonstrate to future employers I know what I'm talking about?

I would bet that the potential future employer would be more impressed by your ability to make and solve things, rather than talk about them. So unless you will be applying for a teaching or writing position it would be safer to use your knowledge for starting projects and creating a portfolio.