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

What to blog about

simonwillison.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 97 posts

Re: What to blog about

#81

Post by quickthrower2 »

simonw wrote: post #34
ok_dad wrote: post #32

Here’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some way to add tests to the code in the article so that if the tests fail the article notifies the reader it might be out of date.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 I don’t know how many times I’ve read how to do Y with X language and I find it’s incredibly out of date and not I should be doing Y differently, or maybe doing Z instead.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/

What would also work, similarly is build your blog using vercel/netlify with tests as part of the deployment processes but are scripts you can run local too.

Re: What to blog about

#82

Post by guynamedloren »

soldeace wrote: post #65
guynamedloren wrote: post #6

My 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…

For the record, I'm now interested in your note-taking system and would love to read more about it.

I received an email inquiring about my note-taking system, so I'll copy-paste my response here:

Nothing revolutionary about my system. The short answer is that I use Notion, because it checks a lot of boxes right out of the gate: it's cross-platform, easily searchable, shareable, and strikes that perfect balance between unstructured and structured data.

The longer answer is: I have top-level documents for each facet of my life, and each of those documents is organized with a particular structure to optimize for a particular use case. Much of it ends up as some combination of nested documents, databases, and kanban-style boards. The databases and kanban boards make use of templates to normalize data whenever possible.

For example, I have a top-level "Automotive" document. Within that document are sub-documents for each of my vehicles. Each vehicle document primarily serves as a quick reference with vehicle metadata like VIN number, license plate number, etc, and maybe some general notes. The vehicle document contains a "Maintenance Log", which is a kanban board to track upcoming maintenance, completed maintenance, repairs, and everything in between. The maintenance items are templatized to streamline entry and reduce cognitive overhead.

I've found that the combination of templatized kanban boards and free form documents can be applied to basically anything, from programming projects, to house renovations, managing job interviews, cooking / menu planning, etc, with slight variations to adapt to a given use case.

--

I'm really pleased with how well this system has worked for me, and have considered writing about it in more detail. How meta. Perhaps I should blog about it :)

Re: What to blog about

#83

Post by abhayhegde »

shayneoneill wrote: post #75

I worked at a company with a senior (Ex Amazon old dude with a PhD in com-sci and math) coder who every day would update an internal blog about the code he had written that day. Although it was occasionally a bit difficult to search, it turned out to be amazing documentation for the code he was written. Just volumes of text about what was a fairly complicated subsystem involving machine learning and a bunch of stuff…

This seems like ideal form of journaling to the minute details. Thanks for sharing!

Re: What to blog about

#84

Post by nolevels »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #68

An addition that most posts, including this would benefit from: Be incredibly kind when judging other people for their projects . What goes around comes back around. IMO a lot of the problem is not in finding things to blog about, but the fact that the Internet hive mind will casually toss off incredibly unkind criticism about your projects. I remember https://harthur.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/771/ making the rounds a…

This should also be observed on HN. I have seen too many Show HN posts with no constructive criticism with the only comment deriding a technical choice / language.

Re: What to blog about

#85

Post by zachthewf »

im-a-baby wrote: post #76
quadrifoliate wrote: post #68

An addition that most posts, including this would benefit from: Be incredibly kind when judging other people for their projects . What goes around comes back around. IMO a lot of the problem is not in finding things to blog about, but the fact that the Internet hive mind will casually toss off incredibly unkind criticism about your projects. I remember https://harthur.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/771/ making the rounds a…

People who hate on projects are those that have never attempted to create something on their own. It's kind of like how the easiest person to sell something to is a salesman. Most people's default reaction to anything is scepticism. People who have tried to create something on their own, and undoubtedly encountered other's scepticism, can skip the apprehensive stage and get to the meat of a project with an open mind.

If only it were so simple. For a contradiction, just see the GP's link to harthur's blog. One of the critics is Steve Klabnik, who has definitely created things on his own.

Sometimes all sorts of people thoughtlessly act like jerks.

Re: What to blog about

#86

Post by est »

I categorize my blog as follows:

- stdin: stuff I've learned from elsewhere

- stdout: concrete, objective stuff. Most of which are coding problems

- stderr: my ramblings about the world, opinions.

Re: What to blog about

#87

Post by guynamedloren »

samsquire wrote: post #78

I prefer reading someone's writeup than the code to implement the software product. With the write-up I can learn how the software works. The code is too hard to read to fit together the puzzle. I read whitepapers to learn what others learned. I keep a list of whitepapers I am interested with on my GitHub profile. I want people to spend lots of time writing what you did on GitHub to explain why your project is useful…

Fascinating! You are prolific, thanks for sharing.

Re: What to blog about

#88

Post by gbrown_ »

An idiosyncrasy I have about TIL posts is that I think they should focus on what you were able to got done/progress with.

TIL posts that truly have been learned that day, or recently, often contain subtle errors explicitly or implicitly. Which isn’t a problem in and of itself but in a when such posts get used as the basis of someone else’s TIL post these errors often get compounded.

As an example I find almost any TIL style post about a text editor to be like this. To give a contrast Chris Siebenmann‘s blog [1] does give focus to what was done. Also the author is reasonably good about making corrections in edits or follow up posts.

[1] https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/

Re: What to blog about

#89

Post by flyingsky »

This blogpost by a self-taught engineer at Uber gives a framework for deciding what to blog about that I really resonate with. "As a rule of thumb, any topic that passes any of the following litmus tests is a good candidate for a blog post or conference talk: 1. The most senior engineer you know would find the information and subject matter compelling. 2. People who read the post think: “Wow, I can’t believe they managed to . I really wish we had someone like that who could help us with ”. 3. The subject matter is deep in a way that readers are unlikely to be able to obtain the same information anywhere else." https://medium.com/swlh/from-coding-bootcamp-graduate-to-bui...

Re: What to blog about

#90

Post by alin23 »

Also please write about your process of writing. I just did here: https://notes.alinpanaitiu.com/How%20I%20write%20this%20blog...

And while I’m not sure it would be of any use to someone, I know I wished I could read how others make their writing process more convenient when I started.

There are so many ways to publish writings that one could get overwhelmed with choices and not even start. For some people it feels good to have some guidance, and let someone with experience make some of the choices for you.

Post reply on HN