I usually write about things I really like. I agree with the mental trap that is only writing about new stuff.
What to blog about
51–60 of 97 posts
Re: What to blog about
#52IMO this is backwards in term of goals and motivation. You should write a blog post if and when there’s something you want to write about. You shouldn’t start from wanting to have a blog but not actually having topics you’re passionate writing about.
Re: What to blog about
#53A long time ago, a Web pioneer told me, "The risk on the Internet is not that you'll be ripped off. It's that you'll be ignored." These stories of blogs going viral and the authors becoming celebrities are like Lana Turner being discovered at Schwab's soda fountain (which turns out not to be true, http://www.playgroundtothestars.com/2013/06/schwabs-drug-sto... ).
There are no stories of blogs going viral and the authors becoming celebrities in the linked post.
One pedantipoint for you.
"These stories" -- I guess one could interpret that as an assertion that the stories are in the linked post. If you're looking for something to nitpick.
Re: What to blog about
#54My problem is I get stuck at the very last step: publishing. I take copious, detailed, organized notes for everything I do (house renovations, DIY projects, programming projects) with a robust system that I've fine tuned over the years. This habit has proven to be invaluable for me, as I continuously reference notes and learnings from many years prior. However, by the time it comes to editing and publishing, I've alr…
Maybe start out not editing and just publishing your raw notes if you can. If people express interest, that might incentivize you to start editing. Basically prototype your writing.
Also, I find editing easiest with some time between writing and editing. Time away allows me to digest my own thoughts more and also makes my writing less precious to me. I sort of become a reader to my own posts and find it much more palatable to edit at that point
Re: What to blog about
#55I hope blogs can be in the format of axios, a twitter in layers basically.
summary
more details
even more details
Re: What to blog about
#56Here’s what I want for a technical blog platform: some way to add tests to the code in the article so that if the tests fail the article notifies the reader it might be out of date. One test could be “is the software version used here super old?” I don’t know how many times I’ve read how to do Y with X language and I find it’s incredibly out of date and not I should be doing Y differently, or maybe doing Z instead.
You could absolutely get something like that working using GitHub Actions. My TIL blog is served out of a GitHub repo - it doesn't have tests against content in the TILs themselves yet, but it wouldn't be a big stretch to add that. Something like nbdev might fit this idea well too: https://nbdev.fast.ai/
Thanks, I think for an upcoming hobby project I might follow your lead and write a blog for myself. I’m trying out zig, and documentation is lacking, so maybe it’ll help some other people get a start. It’ll also give me something to point to in lieu of programming interviews.
Re: What to blog about
#57I hope blogs can be in the format of axios, a twitter in layers basically. summary more details even more details Also wish blog has some minimal standard, like the date, author, how many words behind the title, it always made me a bit uneasy when there is no way to find out the date it's written.
[deleted]
Re: What to blog about
#58I think this is good advice. There are lots of links to an exact piece of code if you go to stack overflow. But few detailed discussions of how you get to the right answer and that's really helpful to beginners. Julia Evans, who is currently in the front page of HN again, basically writes a variant of TIL all the time. https://jvns.ca/blog/2022/11/06/making-a-dns-query-in-ruby-f...
[deleted]
Re: What to blog about
#59You know I am going to confess to a couple of biasses here. Bias 1 - When I saw the article title in the listing of all the new submissions on hacker news, I thought to myself - "Sheesh, Here is somebody who wants to just become popular without a goal in mind. Why can't they just work on some thing they are passionate about and write about that to teach others" Bias 2 - then I clicked on the article and saw who The a…
[deleted]
Re: What to blog about
#60My problem is I get stuck at the very last step: publishing. I take copious, detailed, organized notes for everything I do (house renovations, DIY projects, programming projects) with a robust system that I've fine tuned over the years. This habit has proven to be invaluable for me, as I continuously reference notes and learnings from many years prior. However, by the time it comes to editing and publishing, I've alr…
I've been looking at the Zettelkasten note taking method recently, and one of the things it forces you to do is write notes that are pretty much publication-ready. The main use case of the method is publication actually.
Of course it's more upfront investment, but then you arrive at a state where it's more about selecting the notes you want to put together to form your article and just write a few sentences to connect the dots before your article is ready.
This may suit you if you're ready to invest more initially.