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Show HN: Writing for Software Developers

philipkiely.com

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Re: Show HN: Writing for Software Developers

#31

Post by rofws »

chpmrc wrote: post #9

Writing seems to be the single best thing you can do as a professional, in other areas as well. I know people who were hired because of a single Medium article that got a lot of traction (and made that person sort of a reference in the industry). What do you think about videos? I see lifestyle channels for devs and tech workers taking off but do you think there's a chance the same might happen for more technical chan…

It might just be a problem with me, but I think that the level of articulation that a book can offer is way higher than what a video could. A book is written down, read, edited, and thoughtfully compiled, with the possibility of new editions coming out regularly. With a video this is less easy to do unless you want to keep re-recording.

Re: Show HN: Writing for Software Developers

#32

Post by rhlsthrm »

xueyongg wrote: post #26

Keep writing!! I've personally started my journey into content creation as a software engineer just this year! To be more focused, I found a growing passion for Design Patterns and started writing my learning about them. Hope to share the same passion with you! Keep going pal! Would love to hear some tips from you! Here's my site, and hope it encourages you all! https://blog.phuaxueyong.com/post/2020-05-03-3-more-clo…

This is so cool! I’ve just started myself (still putting together my blog). I really want to learn functional programming, maybe writing about it would be a good way to start on my journey too!

Re: Show HN: Writing for Software Developers

#33

Post by braythwayt »

Something, something, “Build your brand by writing.”

Something, something, “Communicating with words is as important as communicating with code in a team setting.”

But moving up Maslow’s Hierarchy, writing about ideas you want to personally explore (a’la pg) is exactly how you force yourself to think those ideas through. It’s valuable in its own right, whether people read them and shower you with the “three Ps” or not.

So write, and write often. Do not spend great amounts of time carefully choosing what yo write. Just write, and incorporate feedback into your work. Revise endlessly, much as one refactors software endlessly.

Do not write about things that don’t interest you just because you get more up-boats for “How to use Flibbitz in a managed K8s container with XML configuration,” unless Flibbitz personally interests you.

Write about what tickles your brain, and keep at it incessantly. What little (and it’s not much in the scale of things) success I’ve had writing essays and books can all be traced back to writing about things I personally care about.

Re: Show HN: Writing for Software Developers

#34

Post by [deleted] »

braythwayt wrote: post #33

Something, something, “Build your brand by writing.” Something, something, “Communicating with words is as important as communicating with code in a team setting.” But moving up Maslow’s Hierarchy, writing about ideas you want to personally explore (a’la pg) is exactly how you force yourself to think those ideas through. It’s valuable in its own right, whether people read them and shower you with the “three Ps” or no…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Writing for Software Developers

#35

Post by patio11 »

philipkiely wrote: post #2

Hi HN, I have been working on Writing for Software Developers for six months and I'm so excited to finally launch it! I set myself the goal of launching before my (now virtual) university graduation and I'm proud to have hit that goal by six days. Right now the book is 12 dollars off (launch pricing) and you can read chapter 1 for free at https://philipkiely.com/assets/files/wfsd_chapter1_sample.pd... The book featur…

I don't recall saying that grellas was a lawyer for Microsoft but I assume that might just be a transcription infelicity.

This is the comment which I was referring to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1137669

The existence of comments like this is one of the things I like most about this community, as described in the above quote. (Thanks all.)

Re: Show HN: Writing for Software Developers

#36

Post by liamN »

Wowowow! I've only read the FREE first chapter so far, but honestly, I'm pretty hooked. If the rest of the book is as useful and well-written as the first chapter (which I suspect it is) then the price is a steal. Following this book's advice in writing your own tech articles will earn you your money back from buying it within a couple of weeks.

Well done philipkiely!

Re: Show HN: Writing for Software Developers

#37

Post by tdrgabi »

philipkiely wrote: post #8
tdrgabi wrote: post #6

I didn't carefully read the whole article, scanned through it and read the comments. Sorry if I missed the answer. Is this an intro / "how to" book about technical writting, or a book with a series of interviews with good writers. In the same genre as "Founders at work"?

Both! The first act is step-by-step on how to write technical tutorials. The second act is examples of that process. The third act is about the business of writing. All of that is a book that I wrote, but does rely heavily on block quotes from interview subjects, plus 30,000 of my own words :) Then, the appendix contains all of the interview transcripts, totaling 45,000 words.

Thank you for clarifying

Re: Show HN: Writing for Software Developers

#39

Post by philipkiely »

_Understated_ wrote: post #38

The purchase link isn't working for me. I get a certificate error. Edit: It appears that by connecting via my VPN, it gives me a certificate error when the link redirects via gum.co... goes away when I disable it. Seems worrying...

I'm sorry you experienced difficulty purchasing it. If you are still having issues you can email me philip@kiely.xyz I'll see what I can do.

Re: Show HN: Writing for Software Developers

#40

Post by ivansavz »

jonfw wrote: post #24
chpmrc wrote: post #9

Writing seems to be the single best thing you can do as a professional, in other areas as well. I know people who were hired because of a single Medium article that got a lot of traction (and made that person sort of a reference in the industry). What do you think about videos? I see lifestyle channels for devs and tech workers taking off but do you think there's a chance the same might happen for more technical chan…

Forced pace is a huge problem for videos. If you encounter a paragraph that you already know all about in an article, you can skip it. If you encounter a section of a video like that, it's harder to skip so I'll end up trying to sit through it, getting bored, then distracted, and then who knows what I'll miss. The 'killer feature' of writing is the ability to self-pace. To me that makes them orders of magnitude more…

For self-pacing videos, this chrome plugin is VERY useful. You can watch videos at 2x, 2.2x, or any other increment of 0.1x: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-speed-contro...
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