I listen to dev related podcast when I go running. This episode of 'Programming Throwdown' talking about soft skills for a software developer made me think about the way I write these blogs.
Out of the whole podcast, one thing really stuck in my head. People are over-complicating things when they write about their projects. There's a level of satisfaction and accomplishment that comes when you write about a complicated project and yeah sure, it feels good. But is that really what you want to write?
It has got me thinking. For the past blogs I've written, the topics always ends up covering a lot more than I intended to, and the more things I say the more I want to say, so I end up in this never ending circle of writing those long and unstructured random points. I admit it was quite fun, when ideas flow into your head and you get really excited to discover them.
But there is one intrinsic limitation, a blog is not a suitable format. An academic paper is better. Let me explain why.
If you've read any of my previous blogs (this is not assumed, but hey if you're reading this one, chances are you've read other ones), you might have notices (or even slightly annoyed) that there are many abrupt shifts to different topics, simply by saying 'I may talk about this later' (and never does). Well this is because there are too many things to talk about and there's so little time.
This brings problems. Biggest concern, well, apart from readibility, in which I'm not expecting anyone to actually read my writings, is the integrity of things. This is related to my personal preferences. I have a general hatres about sensational articles, and my historian girlfriend has slowly brainwashed me into respecting references. I'd like to justify something before I put it down on the internet, through sources or reasoning. But it's just not quite possible in a format of a blog, which I spend about an hour to write to write an article and leave it behind me.
It's time to rethink what I actually want to put in here. I started writing blogs not because I wanted to influence people, it's more that I had a personal website and it looked a bit umm...... empty. I wanted some content on here, but didn't really think of what content it would be. 'Where do I get content?' asklled myself, 'the journal!' the other half of my brain answered. Yeah that's a good idea, there are some interlectually interesting pieces scattered between the daily rantings in my journal, I could put them in the blog.
It all seemed so beautiful, until I started realising how expectation of an audiance can affect the way you write. When I was writing for the journal, I did not bother the slightest to justify what I write, I mean, at the end, what do I care? If the justification looks interesting I'll go off and do it and write about it in a different day's journal, otherwise why bother? Journal writing was more about the writing process than the actual content that fascinates me.
When it comes to writing blogs everything changed. Now I feel obliged to justify everything I say, well otherwise I'd be spreading Fake News. And I'm not particularly sufficient with English grammar (you might have found this out the hard way, well done for still keeping up) but correcting grammar disrupts my thinking process. So I always end up with blogs that I'm not particularly happy with, they're not very presentable nor does it give me the unrestricted freedom to discover ideas.
So, these interlectual stuff will go back to my journals. And I'll start with a new format of blog. I'll talk about the little things I've learnt during the day, and maybe some hot takes but it won't be very developed.
Oh yeah, I also don't know how to end an article....