Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 76 posts

Re: I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

#21

Post by anonytrary »

moritonal wrote: post #5

Can we stop with "medium.com" links here? They reward read-time which means it's in a dev's interest to write click-bait and stretch content. It also might just be me, but always something off about a dev not hosting their own blog, leading to a company being able to throw a pay-wall over your content.

This problem isn't unique to Medium. Content itself performs optimally in the current web ecosystem when it is click-baity and stretched out. I've seen just as bad stuff from developers who create their own #learntocode[0] blogs.

[0] Referring to the current trend of developers creating YouTube channels and blogs that funnel people into their "crack the Google interview" subscription course that is basically just them solving a bunch of leetcode questions.

Re: I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

#22

Post by Pokepokalypse »

duiker101 wrote: post #2

I am 100% part of those developers that is trying to improve their communication skills. Since February I have made it a big focus to try and find a voice. It's super hard. English is not my native language, and even if it were, I am not a good communicator. But I started writing tweets and a blog. It's a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, I've had a lot of success, I have followers, readers etc... on the other hand, i…

I've always felt that if a developer can put themselves in to the point of view of a naive person, (ie. a complete non-technical person, OR a developer who may not have all the same experiences, or perhaps one who is self-taught, and has gaps) - then they can shape how they conceive and explain things, and it's super helpful.

In fact, I think I learned this technique in Technical Writing 101.

Re: I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

#23

Post by duiker101 »

balfirevic wrote: post #14
duiker101 wrote: post #2

I am 100% part of those developers that is trying to improve their communication skills. Since February I have made it a big focus to try and find a voice. It's super hard. English is not my native language, and even if it were, I am not a good communicator. But I started writing tweets and a blog. It's a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, I've had a lot of success, I have followers, readers etc... on the other hand, i…

> But I started writing tweets and a blog. How did you get started? Any tips on getting dev blog readers (not that I have one yet)?

I am really not the best person to answer this because I am still very unexperienced. But I had the luck of writing one blog post that got a lot of traction and to have a website that can generate a bit of traffic to the blog.

The actual writing was really the hard part for me. Putting my knowledge to words is tricky. I struggle with finding topics and how to express them. What worked for now was more of a "whatever, let's just do it" attitude and try different things.

Re: I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

#24

Post by balfirevic »

duiker101 wrote: post #23
balfirevic wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I started writing tweets and a blog. How did you get started? Any tips on getting dev blog readers (not that I have one yet)?

I am really not the best person to answer this because I am still very unexperienced. But I had the luck of writing one blog post that got a lot of traction and to have a website that can generate a bit of traffic to the blog. The actual writing was really the hard part for me. Putting my knowledge to words is tricky. I struggle with finding topics and how to express them. What worked for now was more of a "whatever,…

> I am really not the best person to answer this because I am still very unexperienced.

Nah, that is exactly why I asked you, and I mean that in a positive way.

Someone very experienced might have very well forgotten how it was when they started, or they might have started when online writing landscape was quite different. Or, worse, they might say "well, I just sent an email to my 5000-member email list, how else would you start a blog?" :)

What is your blog? I dug out https://duiker101.net/ but that is returning 404 for me.

Re: I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

#25

Post by yodsanklai »

apeescape wrote: post #13

As Homer Simpson noted^, jealousy and envy mean different things. If you're jealous, you're worried someone will take something away from you, whereas an envious person just wants to get other people's success for themself. ^ https://youtu.be/Tmx1jpqv3RA

> If you're jealous, you're worried someone will take something away from you

I'm not a native speaker, but my (Apple) dictionary definition doesn't match Lisa's.

jeal·ous | ˈjeləs | adjective feeling or showing envy of someone or their achievements and advantages: he grew jealous of her success.

Re: I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

#26

Post by abnercoimbre »

You can improve your communication and inspire communities, without stagnating, by de-coupling it from your day-to-day; for example:

- I'm a developer organizing indie conferences [0]. I'm always described as an "organization kind of guy." I don't go out of my way to influence on programming techniques.

Alternatively there are:

- Developers who stream their projects, commercial or otherwise. They're well-known because people value insights from seeing someone do technical work.

I'm probably missing other cases of "influencers" who don't slowly stagnate by focusing too much on courses and marketing.

[0] https://www.handmade-seattle.com

(Forgive the plug; hoping it's relevant.)

Re: I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

#27

Post by [deleted] »

moritonal wrote: post #5

Can we stop with "medium.com" links here? They reward read-time which means it's in a dev's interest to write click-bait and stretch content. It also might just be me, but always something off about a dev not hosting their own blog, leading to a company being able to throw a pay-wall over your content.

[deleted]

Re: I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

#28

Post by oh_sigh »

phalangion wrote: post #9
moritonal wrote: post #5

Can we stop with "medium.com" links here? They reward read-time which means it's in a dev's interest to write click-bait and stretch content. It also might just be me, but always something off about a dev not hosting their own blog, leading to a company being able to throw a pay-wall over your content.

I wish we could stop complaints about Medium from showing up on every post from Medium. It's a distraction from the content, and off topic, and yet the complaint shows up with remarkable regularity.

Maybe hn should have a dedicated "metacontent discussion" comment which collects all the discussion topics like this under a single collapseable top level thread. Whether it's about gdpr/cookies, paywalls, noscript behavior, twitter-thread rant, there can sometimes be more metacontent discussion than content discussion.

Re: I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

#29

Post by m463 »

jamestimmins wrote: post #4

The best developers aren't putting out tons of content or courses. The people putting out popular courses are just the best course developers/marketers. There are plenty of folks like Tom Christie, who has minimal social media following, but who built Django Rest Framework, which is used by tens of thousands of projects. The best developers are leaders, whether or not they're thought leaders.

I remember reading the iWoz book by Steve Wozniak.

At the end he had some advice and one thing he said went against all popular advice but sort of agreed with my internal dialog.

It was basically "work alone".

EDIT: "Artists work best alone. Work alone."

Re: I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

#30

Post by coffeefirst »

balfirevic wrote: post #14
duiker101 wrote: post #2

I am 100% part of those developers that is trying to improve their communication skills. Since February I have made it a big focus to try and find a voice. It's super hard. English is not my native language, and even if it were, I am not a good communicator. But I started writing tweets and a blog. It's a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, I've had a lot of success, I have followers, readers etc... on the other hand, i…

> But I started writing tweets and a blog. How did you get started? Any tips on getting dev blog readers (not that I have one yet)?

Start by making something good. Figure the rest out later—including whether you even care if you have readers, and if so why.
Post reply on HN