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Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

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Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#101

Post by precompute »

lethain wrote: post #43

I've been blogging for about 16 years. Writing is an underrated way to cement what you learn any given day or year, and over time has made it possible to reach into any part of the industry and get an actual response. Writing is particularly powerful in combination with actually doing things that (are perceived to) matter; the credibility from doing both is much higher than doing either. Concretely answering the ques…

I like how you have no filler or cruft on your blog posts, and jump straight to the topic. I went on a "binge" of your blog a year and half ago and left with a lot of actionable advice. Thank you!

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#102

Post by mad44 »

At https://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/ I distill and summarize distributed systems and database systems research paper. I recently got over 600 posts.

The main benefit of the blog for me was to crystallize my understanding. Having forced myself to post in public, I try to write a simple and accessible summary. This leads me to realize the gaps in my understanding, and fill them. This also strengthens my understanding, because by explaining the work in my own words, I internalize the concepts better. When I revisit a paper I have read before, the difference between a paper I wrote a post about and one I just read for myself is clear as day and night. I have a much better recall about the paper I posted. For a paper I wrote a summary, I just go to my summary and am able to cache back in all my understanding of the paper to my brain with a quick re-read of my summary.

This being said, I also benefited in terms of networking and collaboration. Through the blog post discussions on Twitter, I made many friends who work on distributed systems and databases. I think the blog was also useful for getting me a sabbatical at Microsoft Azure CosmosDB in 2018.

Finally, it feels really good to share my learnings, and put my rough ideas in the open. I learn from other blogs, and it feels good to give back. Every couple months I would get an email, thanking me for my blog, and that means the world to me.

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#103

Post by moneywoes »

ludovicianul wrote: post #78
benwerd wrote: post #63

I've been blogging since 1998 and can trace every major step forward in my career to my blog. In 2003 I started writing about social networking and education - the replies to that blog post helped me kickstart my first startup. In 2009 my blog posts about technology ethics led to me giving a talk at Harvard, which led to my becoming the first employee at a media tech startup. That in turn led to me learning more abou…

Any particular reason for emphasising the "own domain /control"?

Yep especially compared to substack

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#104

Post by Ozzie_osman »

It's actually a really hard time for indie bloggers, but I still think you should do it.

I've been blogging for years. I've had a handful of posts go Twitter-viral and/or make the front page of HN, but most of what I write feels like it's just talking into the void.

That said, the benefits are numerous. When I'm looking for a gig, I can point people to my writing. When I'm hiring folks, I can point people to my writing. It gives them a genuine window into how I think about the world. It's one thing to say that you do X, Y, and Z. It's much more credible to point to a blog post you've put out into the world that says you do X, Y and Z, and explains how and why you do it.

The other benefits are more personal. It helps me clarify and structure my thinking. It also helps me remember how I thought about a problem when I want to revisit it in the future, to see how/whether my thinking has evolved or deteriorated.

So if you're going to write because you think you'll magically get an audience and/or numerous job offers, you'll be disappointed. If you write because it's beneficial to you, the rest might happen and if it does it'll be a cherry on top.

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#106

Post by jrumbut »

I don't maintain much anymore, but one of the key lessons I learned very early in my career is that having anything in public (a link blog, a github where you post a tutorial you've done, a class project online, a quick YouTube tutorial) will put you instantly ahead of some really substantial percentage of the population who have nothing to show.

Back in the days of yore when I did it this put you ahead of 50-60% of new graduates. It's less now, but I review internship applications and a good 30% still give me nothing tangible I can look at.

So if you happen to be in the 30%, the best thing you can do (and it's so quick) is to put anything at all related to your professional development online. Go through a tutorial, post the results, and briefly write up your thoughts on it.

Congratulations, you just skipped 30% of the line for your first job in an evening of work.

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#107

Post by amenghra »

I started my blog in 1996 [1].

It started slow -- before I even became an engineer. As I grew as a software engineer, I started to set aside time specifically to write a post. At peak, I was spending ~50h per month writing one technical post. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. It helped improve my thinking and writing skills. Over time, it became harder for me to find the time (and content/ideas) so I've essentially stopped adding new posts. I keep the site up since it doesn't cost me anything beyond the domain name.

I don't have any analytics, so I have no idea how many visitors I get. Cloudflare does tell me that they saved me GBs of bandwidth every month and mitigated ~10 "events", so I'm guessing there's at least a handful of people and hundreds of bots -- hopefully enjoying the content.

[1] https://www.quaxio.com/

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#108

Post by Brajeshwar »

Vibgyor5 wrote: post #80
benwerd wrote: post #63

I've been blogging since 1998 and can trace every major step forward in my career to my blog. In 2003 I started writing about social networking and education - the replies to that blog post helped me kickstart my first startup. In 2009 my blog posts about technology ethics led to me giving a talk at Harvard, which led to my becoming the first employee at a media tech startup. That in turn led to me learning more abou…

> I recommend it. Start a blog - on your own domain, on webspace that you control. Following up on this - any specific reason behind this? I am considering starting a newsletter soon to first gather audience and Substack looks like right solution for this without requiring much technical setup, esp. as a non-tech. Idea is to first start blogging, get into that mindspace, build an audience and then you can move it to…

There has been enough instances of platforms dying, pivoting, or just plain ignoring their users. It is OK to use a platform, but own the content or a backup of it that you can "walk away if needed." So, owning your own domain and perhaps pointing it to the blogspots, substacks, and WordPresses of the world as a tool is a OK. One day, you will need to relocate to another platform or tool(s).

If you own your own domain, and own the content, you can just walk out and it will still be alive. This is assuming that your content are more important (to you) than the platform.

Once, WordPress was the new MovableType/Blogspot, Medium the new Wordpress, and now Substack the new Medium. You never know.

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#109

Post by marcusbuffett »

I blog at mbuffett.com , personally I just like seeing that people are engaging with or learning from my posts. Like whenever there’s a new release of Bevy, I get hundreds/thousands of people reading my snake game tutorial, and that’s fulfilling to me, to know that I’m helping people. For the more opinion-based posts, it’s fun to see the discussion on HN, or get emails from people agreeing/disagreeing.

I’ve had 3 blogs now, the first was just for fun, the second was because I was told it was “good for my career” in some vague sense, and now I’m back to doing it for fun. The one I did for vague career reasons had the worst content, and did nothing for me. In general I think it’s hard to have a blog lead you to jobs, but maybe this isn’t true if you’re blogging about very niche stuff.

I kind of object to the “purely vanity” catch-all in the last sentence, as if the act of creation has no intrinsic value, so if it’s not a means to an end, it must be for vanity.

Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

#110

Post by markshead »

There are few better ways to increase your learning on a technical topic than to write a post about it and get lucky getting traction on HN. I wrote a post on State Machines a few years ago and the feedback I got from the HN community was incredible in helping me refine the post and deepen my understanding of the topic.

(https://blog.markshead.com/869/state-machines-computer-scien...)

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