Although I've been programming for a few years now, the thought of starting a blog detailing my enlightening, enjoyable and at times frustrating journey through code only occurred to me quite recently. It was at this point that I stumbled upon Hashnode's technical writing bootcamp on the Hashnode Discord server, and I signed up for it almost immediately. Something I found very useful was the writing prompt Sam gave us at the end of the day, since it helped me to just get started, which is by far one of the most important steps when beginning a new initiative.

In this post, I will try to set out what got me interested in writing, why I want to become a technical writer and what you can expect to see on this blog.

What got me interested in writing

I have always enjoyed reading greatly, and somewhat inevitably, was drawn to crafting my own stories, so even though I have dabbled in writing before, it was usually fiction. There is just something irresistible about watching characters pop into existence as your fingers fly across the keyboard!

And then, when I started programming, I came across so many content creators on YouTube helping teach the world how to code with such high-quality tutorials. This inspired me to try and make my own videos, though I quickly realized that speaking, recording and editing videos is no mean feat. Therefore, I began to search for other avenues in which to connect with the community and help others learn, which is when the idea of starting a blog struck me.

Now, I don't intend to say that writing technical articles is a piece of cake - in fact, it is just as hard as making videos, as I quickly found out - but combined with my love for the written word, I realized that this was a much better option for me.

Why I want to start blogging

Teaching is just another way to learn

Many famous academics have acknowledged that explaining a concept to others helps you better comprehend it yourself.

If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself. ~ Albert Einstein

If you want to master something, teach it. ~ Richard Feynman

Even in my personal writing experience (which largely consists of an article I'm currently working on about Formik and Yup), I have found that when I am trying to teach a technology, I am forced to read through the documentation and work with it much more extensively than if I just used it once or twice in a personal project. This, along with the added experience I get when I build smaller projects and examples to complement my writing, will make me much more well-versed with the technology.

Writing helps you get noticed in the community

Producing well-written articles and tutorials can get you noticed by fellow coders and writers. In fact, this was brought up in the first bootcamp session yesterday, and the speakers talked about how maintaining a consistent blog can aid in connecting with others in the technical writing and programming world, and even help shape your career later on.

What I will be writing about

Web development is my undoubted passion, so it is what the main focus of my blog will be. I will be covering HTML; CSS; JavaScript and JavaScript frameworks like React.js, Next.js and Vue.js. Apart from that, I am interested in web design, so you might find occasional articles on that topic as well here. To be honest, I don't know exactly what this blog is going to turn out to be, but I guess I'll figure it out as I go along. Above all, I hope to stay consistent, because while getting started is very important, keeping at it is equally vital.

So that's it for now, folks! Stay tuned for my Formik x Yup tutorial and also comment below if you get the web development reference in the name of my blog!

Cheers, Hari!