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

Are you just looking for an excuse not to do it? People write about things they don't know much about all the time. Just start. People will read it, or they won't. People will find value in it, or they won't. No matter what, you'll get the practice that's required to improve.

"...I just think it could help me learn more, faster and to improve my communications skills."

That's reason enough to write about what you're learning. Patio11 talks about this a lot - it's important that people learning new things write about what they're learning _as they learn it_ because they'll encounter things that only someone new to that domain will encounter in that particular way.

There's a lot of value in writing about the issue you had setting up your dev environment or getting your "Hello world" app to work because other people will encounter those things too.

And just writing about something will help reinforce what you're learning so you'll learn faster and forget less.

Blog using jupyter so others can analyze your work.

100% - writing isn't about having readers from day one. It's about learning how to express yourself. I've been blogging for 6 years now. When I started I had no idea what I wanted to talk about, so I just used it to flush out thoughts I had.

You will find an audience as you find your voice. What you hae to say will resonate as you get better at writing (±12 months of consistent writing is a good rule of thumb to start building a readership).

Forget money. Forget "professional network" even. Just focus on having conversations with people who are passionate about things you're passionate about. If you're lucky, you'll interview a hero of yours.

It's completely fine (and will likely help make you better in the fields you blog about and better at communication in general, which is gold.) Of course you wouldn't want to misstate your experience or qualifications, but it doesn't sound like you were contemplatin that anyway.

And if you are able to communicate what you are doing and why, it will be a help to people who are in roughly the same position as you with an interest in the same thing, which is great.