Self-Improvement

You should be coding

by

There’s no doubt about it. Software engineering as a continuously evolving and advancing discipline that often requires programmers to be equally steadfast in their advancement.

For new developers, perhaps those undertaking a self-taught journey or have recently joined or graduated from a boot camp, they will often look to the tech side of Twitter, Dev.to, and other communities for inspiration on how they can succeed in their new career; how they might become more employable and stand out from the crowd to find the success that they crave. Their efforts are not completely misguided – there’s plenty of fantastic information out there, and occasionally putting your ear to the wall can be useful in uncovering the latest trends and up-and-coming frameworks.

However, there is a sinister evil that lies amidst these communities. Many of those who garner large amounts of followers and engagement, those that quickly accelerate to the top of recommended lists and follow suggestions, are often nothing but charlatans. Of course, this isn’t all of them, but it’s many of them, and you might already know the kind of folk I’m talking about.

Those that are more social media influencers and link aggregators, than they are developers. They’ll post the same snake oil several times a day, the “learn x quick” tutorials, the free certifications, the secret tips and tricks that senior developers and industry moguls are purportedly withholding from you. Well, here’s my golden rule for handling just about anyone talking tech online:

Take anything from someone who has more time to tweet and blog than write code with a pinch of salt.

I know there are loads of exceptions and I don’t need a witch mob coming after me with raised pitchforks, the DevRels, the YouTube tech-bros, etc. I’m not really writing this article to ridicule those who produce content for other people. That would be the height of hypocrisy. The point I really want to drive home is that new developers often look to those with strong social media presence as those they should emulate.

Let me make it clear: The vast majority of software developers, especially the most senior and experienced ones, are almost certainly not cranking out amalgamations of no-code tools or the latest AI trends on Twitter. They’re almost certainly not writing article after article on Hashnode about the latest front-end libraries. They’re not doing any of these things.

You know what they’re doing? Well, funnily enough, the realistic answer is probably something not tech related. A senior developer friend of mine once told me that the more experienced developers get, the more they want to do non-tech things in their free time, perhaps tending to their vegetable patch, or perhaps playing golf. But, nevertheless, if they’re looking to upskill for an important new opportunity or they’re changing jobs? They’re writing code. If they’re not writing code, they’re reading code.

That’s the best way to get better. The talk about tutorial hell is a topic we can discuss on a different day, but the fact is, if you want to get better as a programmer, especially a green one, you should be coding. Find problems that you want to solve; things that you’re passionate about and want to resolve and figure out how you’re going to resolve it. Don’t sweat the details. Don’t worry about it being perfect; programming is an iterative process – you can make it better later! Grind Leetcode if that’s your thing!

Reading code doesn’t mean sitting with your nose in Modern Software Engineering by Dave Harley (though I highly recommend it). It means watching YouTube videos, or Twitch streamers, or even better, reading and understanding the source code of open source libraries and things that interest you. Many software engineers don’t realise it, but by reviewing their own code, and the code of their colleagues, they’re improving their own development and computational thinking abilities. It’s all nourishment for the mind.

I’d like to round off this rant by saying it’s not a bad thing to write blog posts, or to be engaged on social media if that tickles your fancy. Just don’t let it be a distraction. All the blog posts and followers in the world are not comparable to real-world experience.

So that game you’ve been thinking about? The portfolio site you want to build? The next generation social media and mobile app you know will change the world? Don’t wait until you’re more experienced, you should start now. The learning process happens by primarily by doing, secondarily by reading. Then and only then, consider writing a blog post about what you learned – we’ve got enough damn blog posts about the mystery of semantic HTML.

What I learned from the Hashnode Writing Bootcamp

by

As an academic and a teacher, I spend a ridiculous amount of time writing. I always believed that I was pretty good at it and always wanted to write even more online. I was enamoured with the concept of technical writing here on Hashnode, but I genuinely had no real idea where to start, what to write about, or how on Earth I was going to reach anyone when I did decide to start scribbling.

To my delight, Hashnode announced a boot camp where budding writers including myself could come together and learn from some of the most experienced and talented writers on the platform. They were ultimately Catalin Pit, Omotola Shogunle, Tapas Adhikary, and Victoria Lo, who gave wonderfully insightful glimpses into their writing journeys, their methodologies and thought processes behind each article, and how to fend off the ever-present dragon of procrastination when their motivation levels run low. It was a humbling experience and one I remain immensely grateful for the opportunity to have participated in.

Here are some of the biggest takeaways from the boot camp as a whole that I’m looking to incorporate into my own writing.

Keep it simple, stupid

My writing is often fluffy and elaborate, making it somewhat difficult for second-language speakers of English to read. I’m afraid this is symptomatic of spending so much time in the ivory tower!

Nevertheless, I have made a conscientious effort in my writing to primarily use active voice, as opposed to passive voice, to always explain acronyms whenever I first use them, and to try to structure my writing into clear, easy-to-digest paragraphs with headings and subheadings as appropriate.

Consistency is the key, but value quality over quantity

Write often and write consistently, but provide value in your writing – what can someone learn from you? What unique perspective do you provide? These are all important questions that we can ask ourselves as we decide on a topic to write about and share with the Internet. As someone with a great deal of experience both as a developer and as an educator, I think that this provides me with a unique viewpoint and perspective to share with the rest of the community.

A high quality, consistent blog is an amazing resource for demonstrating not only your commitment to an ongoing project but both your technical and writing skills at the same time.

Branding and promotion

I’m not great at this because I’m not a huge lover of social media – it took a fair bit of convincing for me to come back to Twitter! But in the long run, it cannot be denied that it remains a powerful utility for sharing your writing with developer communities and with like-minded individuals who will find value in your work.

Sharing your writing on other communities such as freeCodeCamp, Dev, and Medium are also options for furthering the reach of your writing, sometimes even opening up paid opportunities, though personally, I prefer that they remain centralised here.

I’ve taken steps to adopt a unique and consistent design pattern in my images and in my blog design using Adobe Spark, so I hope that I reap the benefit of that down the line as I continue my writing career.

Find a niche

Carving out a niche is a great strategy for building a reader base who will repeatedly come back to read what you’ve written about. Whether that’s about web development, cybersecurity, Python scripting and machine learning, whatever. Establish your niche and maximise upon it.

I’m considering giving this a greater deal of focus in the near future, but it’s really difficult when your interests are incredibly broad and you want to write about everything. Perhaps with time, I will naturally establish my own niche and my own audience who will appreciate my perspective and the links between the topics which I write about.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I want to once again thank the amazing folks at Hashnode for running such a well-coordinated and ambitious remote boot camp, and wish them the best of success in the future! I look forward to the post-COVID future when we can look forward to in-person writing boot camps. Perhaps I’ll see you there!

Furthermore, I’d once again like to thank the aforementioned writing veterans for their time, their expertise, and above all their infectious passion and inspiration that they provide to all of us within their community. Thank you!