You should do it just because writing things helps you to see what you know with clarity.
Ask HN: Starting blogging when you're not an expert?
81–90 of 121 posts
Re: Ask HN: Starting blogging when you're not an expert?
#82Agree with most of what people have said here. I would just say that for me blogging is a way to document my journey while learning a technical subject. I also found myself referencing a lot of my posts months later to remind myself about how I did something. And lastly, teaching and writing something down is a great way to improve your understanding of a subject. So don't worry and write like nobody is reading!
Re: Ask HN: Starting blogging when you're not an expert?
#83Think of it this way:
No one should really proclaim to be an expert in anything. That title is reserved for the opinion of others. All anyone can claim is that they are passionate about a topic – which you are.
Re: Ask HN: Starting blogging when you're not an expert?
#84I noticed that people actually like posts the most when you document what you learned, not what you already know. Then what knowledge you (and probably peers) are missing, is very fresh in your memory, and you can bridge the gap easily (without the curse of knowledge).
And like others said, someone else always knows more anyway.
Re: Ask HN: Starting blogging when you're not an expert?
#85The point isn't that you're an expert. That can be useful. But the point is that you're blogging your discovery process. The how and why of what you've learned. Tech blogs would be fairly dry if they were only a statement of knowledge (even expertise) that didn't also include some amount of discovery process. If you really look, you'll see that most technical blogs are of this type, where someone describes something they've learned, often with a story. These are certainly the most relatable posts. Just go for it!
Re: Ask HN: Starting blogging when you're not an expert?
#86Well, I think you need to consider a few things here:
Firstly, what you consider dumb or 'not knowledgable' might still be far ahead of what a lot of people know about the subject, and hence in their eyes, your perspective would be valuable to have.
Secondly, your experiences are interesting to read about here. I mean, why do you think people read websites dedicated to their owners learning how to do something? Or watch blind Let's Plays of video games?
Because seeing someone else put in the effort and get better at some field or another can be entertaining/interesting in its own right.
Finally, most people are not going to be cruel or judge you for a lack of knowledge here. Most people are generally pretty decent individuals and don't mock those less knowledgeable than themselves based on a few blog posts.
So unless you do something incredibly flame baity (like say, arguing a language you've only just started learning is terribly designed because it's 'too complicated' and claim those who disagre are idiots), most people will be pretty civil about it.
Don't worry so much here. If you think it helps you learn more or improve your communication skills, go for it.
Re: Ask HN: Starting blogging when you're not an expert?
#87I ran almost popular blogs at times (on now defunct platforms) The pursuit of popularity requires putting a good amount of effort into looking at things from your current and target audience perspective. (It makes a good face palm when the 2 float apart) Non of the effort ever produced the real popularity I was looking for, just a few million page views over their existence. But I kept working at it for some reason...
Today I have a blog with thousands of postings that enjoys 1 to 10 visitors every day. 5000 views is a good year. I post videos, gather links and make citations, write my thoughts along with them [at times] and put some effort into organizing a large number of tags into sub tags and sub sub tags (at least that is how the menu unfolds them)
The entire philosophy is to make a blog for the audience that is me. It is wonderful to structure my thoughts like this. I'm tempted to call it a journal but really it isn't. If I did a journal I would feel obligated to post on it.
The blog is really nothing more than an advanced version of your bookmarks menu but in a highly biased way I'm highly amused by the level of technical sophistication. The entire thing is made of static html. The software parts only know how to create static html and a static backup is made of pages before they are replaced with a new version. Non of the upgrades or security hazards ever had any influence on its existence. Its so rigid there is no technology to write about on the blog.
Or a long story short:
I think you have exactly the right idea. If you write it just for yourself you will enjoy every moment of it.
Depending on who you are and what interests you some of your articles might become popular. Completely ignore it when it happens. Just keep it real. The only things of value coming from the outside world should be 1) a sense of responsibility not to post complete trash (for example a chunk of code without explaining why or what) and 2) interesting comments people leave on your stuff.
Just focus on the area where no one can match your expertise.
I suppose a link is required. Ill add what I jokingly refer to as my greatest work: http://blog.go-here.nl/8616
Re: Ask HN: Starting blogging when you're not an expert?
#88Blogging is a great thing! This is my recommendation/algorithm.
1. think about distribution - you want a platform like medium that helps you distributing, you want to post on HN (maybe for a few days), you want to tweet it.
2. if you use medium, focus on reads/week as your primary metric. your first goal is to reach 100 reads/week (it's easier than you think). you need to do step 1. in order to get more reads, which in turn will motivate you to keep writing. (you can check my own medium [1] - it's really bad, I'm not writing since last summer, I'm still getting almost 100 reads/week)
3. make sure you write as you like to read. be concise, focus on the result, short code snippets / leave the rest on github, don't over explain, etc.
4. one of the most important things imo. write for SEO. title should be keyword reach, and make sure to check the keywords of your article with any of the online keyword counters, e.g. [2]. It's a must to maintain the longterm reads/week.
5. as for the topic, don't worry and feel free to be hyper-specific. My most efficient recipe is:
- monitor yourself while working (or studying, experimenting)
- there are times where you search something on google/stackoverflow and the solution doesn't exist in 1 single page, but you have to combine 2-3 different results
- as soon as you have a solution, write it down in a blog post. It shouldn't take more than 1-2h. (examples among my posts: aws policy, kafka offsets, airflow on centos, beam on docker...)
Hope this helps!
Re: Ask HN: Starting blogging when you're not an expert?
#89The one big lesson that I learnt while working on something similar to a technical blog [1] was that the process of writing technical articles slowly gives you a fairly good understanding of the field. The other part I would add is maybe write about things that help people with some issues they are having. Good examples of these are frameworks or concepts that people complain about being too confusing or libraries that are poorly documented. Also, writing about technical concepts in a simple way that helped you understand will very likely be useful to a lot of other people.
Good luck!
[1] Serverless Stack (http://serverless-stack.com)
Re: Ask HN: Starting blogging when you're not an expert?
#90My 2 cents - go for it. Very little downside. Just pick where you write (Wordpress vs Medium) based on how much ownership you want on brand of the blog, versus readership.