MakeThingsWork.dev

Start a Blog - Without AI.

You're a developer. You should write.
And you should focus on writing.

Writing is a critical skill for any developer 1 - heck, so is communication in general 2. You're a professional, you have experience, you have ideas, advice, and wisdom. People need to hear what you have to say but more importantly you need to practice getting your point across.

I've been programming professionally since 2011 and in that time my technical skills have grown by leaps and bounds. Two things are apparent, however:

  1. People who make the hiring decisions don't usually appreciate the specifics of my technical prowess. 3
  2. A massive amount of my programming talent is the result of other developer's willingness to share their knowledge.

Let's explore the two points above before moving on to some of my thoughts on the specifics of getting started... and why you should probably get started without AI.

Programmers Don't Usually Hold The Purse Strings

Typically you aren't hired by a fellow programmer 4 - not really. Sure, you almost always have some sort of technical interview or take-home assignment but usually this is meant to confirm what should be a simple fact: you can program!

Your ability to present yourself and your ideas will make you stand apart and writing will help you a great deal.

As a quick aside, this isn't a guide on how to get hired, this is simply very relevant to my first point: you should be writing!

Writing helps you formulate thoughts, helps you present yourself, and should almost always trigger new avenues of thought. It's exercise, plain and simple and choosing your audience is key. You want to be able to explain technical details to technical people - but it's a real challenge to explain things in a way that a C-level can fully grasp.

Writing blog posts is a great way to start this process.

Share The Wisdom

The internet is full of stuff. Some of it good, a lot of it not. A lot of it is AI-generated 5. AI needs data to train and a lot of that is going to be text on the internet. Why not contribute a little bit? You don't have to - but simply honing your writing skill by blogging can also fill the internet with high-quality content that your fellow developers can use (and heck, might even keep the giant AI monster fed and happy and semi-accurate).

Your article could be the difference in someone moving forward on a career path, or deciding to change their behaviors. I read an article early in my career that strongly shaped my outlook on how I write code and freed my mind from a potential trap that a lot of developers fall into: thinking that you shouldn't write/create something because it's already been done before.

This is a bad way of thinking. New ideas come from new perspectives on old assumptions and how can those take shape if you decide to only seek out what's "new"? Get in there, share the wealth that is your experience and help shape minds.

Don't Let AI Write For You

I've always felt it's important and have hypocritically done a poor job of sharing my experience. When I set out to start this blog I decided, after some trial and error, that I wasn't going to use AI to proof-read. Nor was I going to use it to build a blogging site. I found Bear Blog 6 and decided to start writing.

The reason for avoiding AI in this endeavor is twofold:

  1. I want my voice to remain unfiltered. The assumption that my writing without any AI assistance is somehow of higher-quality is terribly narcissistic. However, I can't help but feel like value would be lost if I let AI smooth over the rough bits that make up part of my personality.
  2. I do genuinely like AI and am optimistic about its future. Ironically, the massive amounts of data that AI models need has greatly increased the need for high-quality content. Apart from hopefully shaping the minds of future and current developers, I want to contribute my 2 cents to future of AI training.

Summary

Start writing and sharing your experience and avoid AI when possible to preserve your voice.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to give me a shout and let me know what you think.

-- Rick

  1. https://benmccormick.org/2019/03/01/190000.html↩

  2. As a developer with a degree in communications I am biased in this stance. I can confirm from experience though that my ability to communicate has, in no small part, allowed me to advance in my career.↩

  3. The CEO's usually glaze over when I talk about my recent success in vectorizing natural language strings for use in a RAG. They are, however, very interested in the end-result of such efforts.↩

  4. There are exceptions to everything, of course. A dev that runs a startup will certainly be making hiring decisions but my following points still apply because they will (hopefully) put on the hat of CEO at some point.↩

  5. This study specifically points out that a lot of text is AI-translated content - but it's poor quality. This is my main point: there's a lot of low-quality stuff out there.↩

  6. Thanks to https://tldr.tech/↩

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