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Engineers Should Blog

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Re: Engineers Should Blog

#111

Post by flocial »

pavfarb wrote: post #20

Engineers should blog publicly when they have something to say. Something useful for their colleagues. Engineers shouldn't waste time forcing themselves to blog instead of work just to push their career forward: frequently they just expose they don't have anything to say in extremely unreadable way. What a waste of time for everybody. Soft skills helps you grow as an engineer, it's true, but I think it's important to…

I actually miss the days when engineers blogged more rather than accumulating karma on Stackoverflow. When Stackoverflow emerged it was a great source of knowledge but these days you have to sift through the comments to check if the solutions are still current after api changes. For a lot of stale answers github issues can be more helpful.

The benefit of blogging isn't just to broadcast your knowledge but creating a place to discuss the subject and learn something yourself.

I find it strange that this is the top comment on a forum that wouldn't exist if engineers didn't write publicly. This site is curated from a wide pool of writing and and would benefit from more people writing. Whether something is worth saying is a very subjective call and I don't see how your opinion should dissuade someone from writing.

Re: Engineers Should Blog

#112

Post by flocial »

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #95
patrick_haply wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't write a good blog post without having already written some number of bad ones. To add to this, I'd say: if you don't have a writing habit, the barrier to actually writing something when you do finally have something useful to say will be incredibly high. I am willing, however, to give the GP the benefit of the doubt because they said "Engineers should blog publicly when they have something to say", not "E…

So how do you get feedback for non-public work? On technical blogs, I always read the comments. Even for obscure/somewhat poorly written articles. Because someone who knows more than the author will sometimes leave feedback which will lead you in a better direction and expose you to more ideas. And thankfully, technical blog articles don't attract too many comments on average. Quite often I find that a blog article o…

I also find that the second I hit publish, l tend to find errors and implicit assumptions, etc. Something about going public adds extra polish.

Re: Engineers Should Blog

#113

Post by flocial »

mememachine wrote: post #104
rayalez wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nonsense. What does entitle someone to be called "a writer" other than, you know, writing things? If you're writing - you're a writer. If you've practiced enough to develop good skill - you're a good writer. If you've found a way to make money with it - you're a professional writer. Writing is never bad for you. It's like saying that you shouldn't be pretending to be a programmer, when you know you arent. Wha…

Yes, you can become a good writer, but dont pretend you are one. And yes, writing can be bad for you. You sound like someone whos very attached to the idea that writing is good, but maybe lacking in reasons. Writing, like everything, takes work. For a lot of people its a complete waste of time. To me, most writing has no value.

You do realize the irony of your statement. Or do comments on HN not count as writing and therefore not a waste of time?

I would like to know how writing could be bad for you. Please elaborate.

Re: Engineers Should Blog

#114

Post by id122015 »

pavfarb wrote: post #20

Engineers should blog publicly when they have something to say. Something useful for their colleagues. Engineers shouldn't waste time forcing themselves to blog instead of work just to push their career forward: frequently they just expose they don't have anything to say in extremely unreadable way. What a waste of time for everybody. Soft skills helps you grow as an engineer, it's true, but I think it's important to…

before we jump in to analyse the content of an article, I think its useful to know who wrote it and what their agenda is.

Many want to sell their services and write long articles because its not as spammy as short snippets. But we should able to tell clickbait.

I mean there are too many clickbaity articles on the internet, arent there ?

Re: Engineers Should Blog

#116

Post by mememachine »

flocial wrote: post #113
mememachine wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you can become a good writer, but dont pretend you are one. And yes, writing can be bad for you. You sound like someone whos very attached to the idea that writing is good, but maybe lacking in reasons. Writing, like everything, takes work. For a lot of people its a complete waste of time. To me, most writing has no value.

You do realize the irony of your statement. Or do comments on HN not count as writing and therefore not a waste of time? I would like to know how writing could be bad for you. Please elaborate.

Theres no irony in my statement. Youre just not (intentionally or unintentionally) trying to understand me.

Re: Engineers Should Blog

#117

Post by pavfarb »

srcreigh wrote: post #30
pavfarb wrote: post #20

Engineers should blog publicly when they have something to say. Something useful for their colleagues. Engineers shouldn't waste time forcing themselves to blog instead of work just to push their career forward: frequently they just expose they don't have anything to say in extremely unreadable way. What a waste of time for everybody. Soft skills helps you grow as an engineer, it's true, but I think it's important to…

Many times you don't know what's useful to your colleagues until you hit publish. Writing is useful as experimentation that way.

Writing is, publishing and noising the channels isn't. I'm afraid I find experimentation like that at cost of other people's time and attention to be a bit petty crime.

Re: Engineers Should Blog

#118

Post by pavfarb »

pavfarb wrote: post #20

Engineers should blog publicly when they have something to say. Something useful for their colleagues. Engineers shouldn't waste time forcing themselves to blog instead of work just to push their career forward: frequently they just expose they don't have anything to say in extremely unreadable way. What a waste of time for everybody. Soft skills helps you grow as an engineer, it's true, but I think it's important to…

It's really unfortunate that people do read my comment as "engineers shouldn't write". Engineers should write. I actually write a lot of stuff, because I like it. There are some pieces of your own research you can't understand unless you write it down in a readable, less formal way.

Some small grain of my writing becomes decent enough (English is not my main language) that my employer takes it and uses somewhere.

Because, I believe, writing is important. Noising everything around with your writing isn't important and isn't even OK.

There's even nothing wrong with using writing for promoting yourself, if there are great things you can share with the world. There are a few dozen blogs I read over weekend, some of them are obviously self-promotion driven to attract attention to services or products; but they give me insight into new things in extremely polite fashion, and I love it. But only when the first phrase of my initial comment is valid:

Engineers should blog publicly when they have something to say.

Re: Engineers Should Blog

#119

Post by fredsir »

mememachine wrote: post #116
flocial wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize the irony of your statement. Or do comments on HN not count as writing and therefore not a waste of time? I would like to know how writing could be bad for you. Please elaborate.

Theres no irony in my statement. Youre just not (intentionally or unintentionally) trying to understand me.

I don't understand you either. Please elaborate.

Re: Engineers Should Blog

#120

Post by pavfarb »

flocial wrote: post #111
pavfarb wrote: post #20

Engineers should blog publicly when they have something to say. Something useful for their colleagues. Engineers shouldn't waste time forcing themselves to blog instead of work just to push their career forward: frequently they just expose they don't have anything to say in extremely unreadable way. What a waste of time for everybody. Soft skills helps you grow as an engineer, it's true, but I think it's important to…

I actually miss the days when engineers blogged more rather than accumulating karma on Stackoverflow. When Stackoverflow emerged it was a great source of knowledge but these days you have to sift through the comments to check if the solutions are still current after api changes. For a lot of stale answers github issues can be more helpful. The benefit of blogging isn't just to broadcast your knowledge but creating a…

>I actually miss the days when engineers blogged more rather than accumulating karma on Stackoverflow.

100% hit. I do write sometimes on StackOverflow to give back some help to the wonderful minds over then Internet, because, sharing knowledge is what makes the whole engineering better. What percent of clickbait attention-craving blogging does share some useful insight and/or knowledge?

>I find it strange that this is the top comment on a forum that wouldn't exist if engineers didn't write publicly.

Maybe because you didn't understand the core meaning of the comment? (I address this equally to my writing skills: English is not my first language). It's not "engineers shouldn't write", at all.

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