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Ask HN: Starting blogging when you're not an expert?

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Re: Ask HN: Starting blogging when you're not an expert?

#71

Yes, but prepare yourself. Our community as a whole doesn't reward anything that doesn't fit with the current trends. If you're seen deviating from the social norms, you will get push back, and it's seldom kind or constructive. For example, I wrote this some time ago: http://dave.fayr.am/posts/2011-10-4-rubyists-already-use-mon... I received a lot of hate for this post, both on this site and in other ruby circles. Wh…

Getting hate isn't bad. At least people care. Getting ignored is worse. When you've spent hours of your time writing something up that you think is super interesting, and people can't even be bothered to read it and send you some snarky abuse. That's the worst.

No. I'm sorry, but to me this seems like such a childlike mentality: "Any attention is good attention."

Being ignored is preferable to being ostracized by the community at large. Or so I thought, anyways. Now I realize that my mistake was publishing in the first place. There's only negative outcomes, in general. You'll meet a few good people along the way, and you have to decide if that is worth the trouble or not, it's a scale of personal experience.

Re: Ask HN: Starting blogging when you're not an expert?

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like the kind of blog I would read! Can you share the link please?

Bit of tracking and I guess this is it : https://joelgardner.github.io/

Yes, this is it. It's very early-stages/preview-mode as I haven't quite nailed down the exact architecture I want for the client but it has helped a lot as far as job searching goes!

Re: Ask HN: Starting blogging when you're not an expert?

#76
It absolutely makes sense! Over 10 years ago I started Productivity501 writing on various things I was learning about personal productivity. It has been extremely beneficial as a writing exercise, but it has also given me a much bigger presence on the web. A government agency was doing a background check on me for some contracting work. After they started, the person in charge of contracting called me up and asked how in the world I had time to do everything I had done online. They had done some searches and started finding hundreds of articles I had written over the years, interviews on other websites, people talking about articles I had written, etc. It made a huge positive difference in the way they perceived me.

Regarding not being an expert in some technical field: If you are putting any time at all into learning something, there is always going to be someone coming after you that knows less than you do. Explaining how you fixed a problem or set something up is going to be valuable even if it is very simple and even if you aren't an expert. Do a Google search for "connecting Visual VM to Tomcat 7" for an example of a post that I wrote simply to remind myself how to use Visual VM with tomcat. I am in no way an expert on Visual VM, but many people have found it helpful.

I have a few posts where I've written about a particular problem, forgot about it, and later Google led me back to my own post when I was looking up how to solve that same error again. So even just posting an error message along with a discussion of the details of how you fixed it can be extremely valuable. Think how often you've found an answer because someone else took the time to do the same thing. You probably didn't care if they were considered an "expert" or not.

One last example. Take a look at this article I wrote as an introduction to state machines:

http://blog.markshead.com/869/state-machines-computer-scienc...

I wrote that post to see if I understood the topic well enough to articulate it well. I'm pretty happy with its current state, but, despite all the time I put into it originally, the real work came when it got a bunch of comments from HN readers. If you scroll down to the comments you'll see people pointed out all kinds of problems that I fixed or clarified based on feedback I received. I may not be an expert, but taking the time to write the article, correct it when people pointed out an error, explain when someone thought they found an error that wasn't, and answer questions has given me a much greater amount of expertise than I had before and I'm not sure I could have gotten it any other way.

All that to say, go for it! Don't let your perceived lack of expertise hold you back. You'll find it to be an extremely valuable way to grow.

Re: Ask HN: Starting blogging when you're not an expert?

#77
Yeah I think it is an easy trap to fall into -- to try to be the "expert".

It's harder to just say what you know, and ask questions about what you don't know. And change your mind on the blog.

But that's what makes for a better blog. People want to see your opinions change over time as you learn things. They don't want to necessarily read advice from an "expert", because even if you are an expert, in 3 years the "best practice" may change.

Honestly, the most annoying blog posts are those about "best practices". I skip over those. I want to read people's honest experiences -- learning something or building something -- and then I'll form my own opinion about the best practice.

Re: Ask HN: Starting blogging when you're not an expert?

#79

Definitely. I was in exactly the same position, and just started blogging about stuff as I built it. 'Experts' often don't explain the simple stuff as they assume everyone knows it already. Often, reading about someone's experience as they were first learning a technology is far more useful than trying to learn from an 'expert'. An you'll be suprised about being 'attractive for recruiters.' I wrote a tiny post about…

How does a single post lead to a book deal?

Re: Ask HN: Starting blogging when you're not an expert?

#80
> Does it makes sense to you to start a (technical blog) when you know you're not an expert in any field?

Yes.

Simply sharing what you are learning, how you are learning, or resources you are using to learn is useful. And frankly, it also makes you an expert in your process for learning. No one else is better equipped to share that story than you are.

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