The author | xiao yu jiang
Many programmers already record their growth through their personal blogs or public accounts. More and more programmers are beginning to realize the importance of writing. Why do programmers need to write? What can be gained from writing? What are the additional surprises? This article introduces three programmers who have been writing for a long time, and shares their experiences and gains on the way of writing, hoping to inspire students.
Do you have the habit of writing? Many programmers respond: Why should I write? Many people think that writing is a difficult thing, but in fact, the motivation of writing is hidden in the daily work, those brewing ideas, those fleeting programming ideas, those shining debug moments… It’s all stuff to write about.
Output is the best input. Forming the habit of writing is of great help to technical improvement and personal growth. Programmers who change the world also need to write about it. If you haven’t started writing yet, you may need to rethink what it means to write.
Today, we talked to three programmers who keep writing to see what writing has done for them.
- Han Yan: Alibaba’s front-end technology expert, has updated his blog for 5 consecutive years
- Hollis: Alibaba’s technology expert, head of an official account with 200,000 followers
- Frank: Wuhan2020 open source project initiator, personal blogger
Why did I start writing?
Hollis: Writing makes me think and discuss technology with like-minded friends
After graduation in 2015, I joined Alibaba and engaged in background development work. In the same year, I wrote my first article, which was about the “interview Experience” summarized after I participated in alibaba’s school recruitment. Because in the review stage before looking for a job, I read a lot of other people’s interview summaries, which helped me a lot. Writing this article on the one hand, I want to make a summary of my school recruitment, on the other hand, I also hope to help others.
Since this post, I’ve received a lot of comments, and many people have personally approached me to discuss technology, and I’ve found that writing gives me a lot of fun. Through writing, I can think for myself, summarize for myself, and discuss technology with like-minded friends, so I started to keep writing.
At the beginning, the content was relatively simple, just a summary of some problems encountered in the work. Gradually, I began to take the initiative to learn some things, and then the content of the article gradually evolved into principle analysis, best practice and so on.
At first, I only published my articles on my blog (Hollischuang.com). Later, by chance, I found that the readers of my official account could interact with each other more, so I synchronized my articles to my official account (Hollis). Now, the official account has accumulated nearly 200,000 readers.
Last year, I also sorted out some of the content I had written, and published a book “Three Lessons for Programmers” with my friends, in which I wrote a lot of my own experience and thinking.
Han Yan: Writing is my work log, which can help bring users to the product
As a programmer, we encounter all kinds of technical problems every day, and when I encounter a bit of a problem, I don’t rush to solve it. Instead, I write down the problem, including the code, error logs, screenshots, and even the process of solving the problem with some reference links. With that and a few more principles, a problem log is a blog. So, my first blog, which is kind of like a work journal, was pretty simple.
Later, after graduate school, I chose to start a business with friends. I didn’t know much about operation in the early stage, and I didn’t know how to do user growth. Later, I found that I was good at blogging and could bring many users to my products, so I developed the habit of writing.
I’ve translated a lot of blogs, I’ve written a lot of original stuff, I’ve written some popular blogs, and I’ve written some pretty childish clickbait stuff. However, the level of writing has been improving. After I came to Ali, I wrote an article titled “The Meaning of Writing” and also made a sharing about writing in the team titled “Those Things about Writing: Cold Geese Talk about the Thinking behind 100,000 +”. I really like writing, and I think it’s rewarding.
Frank: I use writing records to develop “black tech” and share my thoughts
Time back to four years ago, after graduation, I became a game development engineer, entered a new field, every day in contact with new things, and game development has a large number of “black technology” that is difficult to see in the regular development of the Internet, dizzying. Since then, I have always had the habit of writing. Since many technical details are not suitable for external use, I used many note-taking software to record, such as Evernote.
Later, I started to do some development work in the open source community, and I still kept the habit of recording my work with Evernote. However, due to the open source, I really want to share my ideas and content in many cases, so blog became a better choice. This is why I choose my blog (blog.frankzhao.cn) to record my writing.
What are the benefits of programmer writing?
Han Yan: Writing is a long-term investment in yourself and the best personal brand
Writing is something with long-term value, like working out or reading a book. I think most people would agree that no matter how busy you are at work, you should keep working out, you should keep reading, because it’s a long-term investment in yourself, and many people do. In my opinion, writing is the same, but few people realize it, and even fewer people can do it.
1) Improve work efficiency
Writing is the most important professional skill. I like to keep a work journal. From another perspective, my daily work is not just writing code, but writing a work journal. I write down technical problems, technical solutions, communication memos, minutes of meetings, and everything related to my work. Before I communicate with colleagues or ask for help, I always write a complete document so that communication is much more efficient.
2) Writing is learning
Writing is the most effective way to learn. The principle here is feynman learning, forcing input by output. In the process of writing, we will find some blind spots of knowledge and thinking. If we can calm down and study clearly, and then express them in the most easy-to-understand language, it is actually a good opportunity to learn and improve ourselves. Writing actually exercises thinking ability, because it is relatively simple to express a point of view. How to express the point of view clearly, completely, profoundly and structurally depends on whether we really think clearly.
3) Create a personal brand
Writing is the best personal brand. The Internet is 30 years old, but the rules of the game haven’t really changed: monetize through traffic. The article writes well, has the reader to have the flow, has the flow to be able to realize. The rise of many “grassroots” writers in the era of we media is the same. In the age of video, the medium of content has changed, but the essence has not, because the value of video content depends on copywriting. As a programmer, you don’t have to write for money, but it’s important to build a personal brand through your writing, which can help you in your job search, recruitment, peer networking, and future startups.
Frank: Writing allows you to see the whole picture from a different perspective
As far as I am concerned, I mainly recorded technology in the first few years of my work, but later, especially during my doctoral study in the past year, I probably wrote more about social science subjects. There are many benefits to writing consistently:
1) Record technological growth
Writing allows me to better record the process of technical growth, and review it frequently will have more growth. While I’m no longer involved in game development, I’m glad I had plenty of notes that allowed me to review technical details and design concepts that are in fact universal in many scenarios and can serve as a guide to other areas of development.
2) Find the whole picture from a different Angle
Many times you think you understand a technical point, but when you put it into words you will find that there are many blind spots that you may have missed. Let’s say you solve a specific problem at work, and when you solve it, you think you understand. But when you use written records, especially if you put yourself in the perspective of a reader to read, can find you ignore things, such as the specific environment, version, there is a problem situation, rely on, when in words to record, will deliberately make up these content, and these just form a panoramic view of the solution to this problem. And my personal feeling is that the growth of recording is probably much greater than the growth of simply solving problems.
3) Improve writing ability and logical arrangement ability
Writing ability is not just a requirement for writers, especially in this increasingly open age, writing is the foundation of passage. Practicing your writing skills not only helps you communicate better with others, but also helps you sort out your logic. Good technical articles also need to have excellent logical arrangement, from shallow to deep, layer by layer. And believe me, this is a very important skill for any job, including programmer work in general.
4) Sharing makes your article “appreciate”
If you write an article and share it with others, the “price” of the article will be more than you can get personally, and helping others will feel better. Before graduate school, I had the opportunity to modify JavaMail’s source code to support basic authentication HTTP proxy servers for mail operations, at a time when JavaMail only supported Socks proxy servers. To this day, I still occasionally get emails from people asking me for implementation details, and I feel like I’m actually helping someone. But it is a pity that I did not understand open source at that time, otherwise I should have helped more people.
Hollis: Writing improves technical skills and can help more people
1) Technical improvement
In the process of writing an article, I will try to ensure that the content written is correct, so I will look up a lot of information, in this process, I will learn a lot of knowledge, can improve my technical ability. Especially when writing a series of articles, you can improve your knowledge system. As the saying goes “teaching is the best way to learn”.
2) Constant error correction
No one has written anything completely right, so sometimes the article will receive some different points of view, at this time you can help yourself to correct mistakes, and constantly improve yourself.
3) Help yourself remember better
Many people will find that there is a phenomenon, is a knowledge learned after a period of time to forget. After having a blog, you can solve this problem. You can write the knowledge to your own understanding in the blog. On the one hand, you can strengthen your understanding and memory, and it is also convenient to turn back and review in the future.
4) Improve personal influence
Because of my own writing, I can greatly enhance my influence in the industry, because I have written many articles, many programmers have read my articles, I once roughly counted that my technical articles have been read tens of millions of times on the whole network. In recent years, I have often been asked by my colleagues in the company: Are you Hollis? So you’re Hollis? I read your article and so on.
5) Help others achieve themselves
When I just came into contact with Java, I always wanted to find a learning path, but I couldn’t find it all the time. Therefore, I summarized a learning path for Java engineers in my business time — The Path for Java Engineers to Become Gods. This article has now been read by millions of people, and I have received a lot of comments saying how much it has helped them. In the last two years, there are often readers in my official account and blog background messages, said that because of my articles found a job in a large factory and so on good news. See their own little effort, can help a lot of people, start to feel a sense of achievement.
What additional surprises does writing give you?
Han Yan: Better career development and understanding of the world
I also came to Ali because of my article, because the director read my blog, learned about my product, and invited me for an interview. The same is true when I hire people myself. If your blog is good enough, I will pay special attention to it.
Writing has also significantly improved my reading ability. In the era of information explosion, it is quite important to identify what is really worth reading. I can judge the level of an article in a very short time and then decide whether to read it carefully. In addition, because I am familiar with the ways of writing myself, I know which words are truly valuable, which are just words of the author, and which points the author has missed.
Hollis: Dating, recruiting and publishing books
Because of writing, I have made many friends with the same interests. Many of them are programmers, as well as the authors of professional books and well-known bloggers. There are also a lot of readers from various Internet companies with different backgrounds. Some of them are great talents with rich work experience. I can also learn a lot from communicating with them.
Because I have my own blog and official account, I have accumulated many readers and received many resumes every time I released recruitment information. Recently, I helped the team recruit several new colleagues. Because my nickname on job posts is Hollis, THE few times I’ve “hooked up” with candidates on job boards, I’ve been asked: Do you have an account?
Because my blog is widely read, I am often approached by editors from publishing houses asking about publishing books. I’ve had friends come to me and want to write a book with me. In 2019, she published a book called “Three Lessons for Programmers” with a friend. After that, I also published a number of free e-books: “Java Development Manual soul 13 questions”, “Java development Manual soul 15 questions”, “Java Engineers into god’s road – basic” and so on.
Frank: Go on the open source research path
Personally, I may be a rare programmer who likes social science records. It’s more like a surprise than a subtle change.
Through writing records, I gradually deepen my understanding of social science and the history of human writing, which is an important reason why I finally embark on the path of open source research. Looking back, every little habit can reshape itself over the years and turn your life in a completely different direction. And writing, or the attitude of lifelong learning behind it, opens up endless possibilities for all of us.
Every programmer should try technical writing, and once you start, you’ll find yourself growing faster and you’ll see the world behind your words differently. Every programmer should not only be limited to technical writing, but also need to record and share the understanding of the world, history and humanity. I hope writing can make you face the screen not only for code, but also for the sea of stars.
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