So, I’m blogging. Yes, that’s right; I finally did it.
For years, I’ve frequented and benefited from numerous software development blogs without ever thinking that I should, or even could, do this too. Well, that’s all changed now. This is my first (non-Hello-World) post, and there’s no turning back now. I certainly have John Sonmez from Simple Programmer to thank!
A few months ago I was stuck in traffic, again, on my way home from work. I was listening to music as usual but felt particularly uninterested. So, it hit me, I should look for some software-development-themed podcasts to listen to while in the car; this could be a fantastic way to put that dead time to good use.
After experimenting with a few different podcasts, I settled on a pretty good selection; one of which is the excellent Software Engineering Radio podcast. I downloaded quite a few episodes and started working my way through the list.
Well, one of the episodes was an interview with John Sonmez about marketing yourself as a software developer. I had been a fan of John’s blog/Pluralsight courses/YouTube channel from before, but I never took his “create a blog” mantra to heart. However, it was this particular interview that sold me, and a story that John told (starting at minute 35:00) about being at a large conference and asking developers to put their hands up if they have a blog, and to keep their hands up if they’ve blogged in the last year/month/week, and finally, if they’ve blogged consistently for the last 52-weeks straight. Well, to my utter surprise, he said that at that point, there’s usually 1 or no hands left in a room of hundreds!
My eyes lit up. I think I realized at that point that the reason why I never gave it a shot is because I assumed that so many people have software development blogs that the internet is completely “saturated” and so there isn’t room for even one more in the mix. Yet, there was John saying that blogging consistently for 52-weeks in a row was enough to put you in the top 99th+ percentile of software-development bloggers out there. This was incredibly exciting, and I decided right then to set up a blog of my own within the next couple of weeks.
I didn’t need to think very hard about how to start or what traps to avoid since I decided to simply sign-up for John’s 3-week email course for setting up a blog (which was mentioned in the interview above, oh, and it’s completely free).
I can honestly recommend that course (especially the first 4 lessons, of a total of 6) to any of my friends who are interested in getting started. At 2 emails per week (which include a lesson and a quick homework assignment, each), for a couple of weeks, I already had a theme, a name, a blog, a posting schedule, and a whole lot of excitement.
The last 2 lessons, I thought, were premature for a blog that is still in its infancy. Learning about how to generate traffic to your blog (legitimately) and how to market yourself as a software developer (John’s other full-fledged course) are probably valuable next steps. However, since I haven’t had the chance to create quality posts on my blog yet, I don’t believe that I should spend time on generating traffic or marketing myself before there is useful content for my future readers.
All in all, it’s been 3-weeks since I’ve started, and I’m already on my second introductory post with dozens of ideas for future posts written down and ready to be acted upon. I cannot wait to see where this blog will take me, and I hope that you will tune in next week for a technical introduction of what this blog will be all about!
(Spoiler: it’s all about C# design patterns, baby!)
