Author | Xiao Jiang
Introduction : Many programmers have used their personal blogs or public accounts to carry out technical precipitation and record their growth. More and more programmers are beginning to realize the importance of writing. Why do programmers need to write? What are the benefits of writing? What are the extra surprises? This article introduces three programmers who have persisted in writing for a long time, sharing their experience and gains on the road of writing, hoping to inspire students.
Do you have the habit of writing? The answer of many programmers is: Why should I write? Many people think that writing is a difficult thing. In fact, the motivation of writing is hidden in their daily work, those whimsical ideas in the making, those fleeting programming ideas, those golden debug moments... They are all writing materials.
Output is the best input. Cultivating the habit of writing is of great help to technical improvement and personal growth. Programmers who change the world also need to write and document the world. If you haven't started writing yet, then you may need to rethink the meaning of "writing".
Today, we interviewed 3 programmers who insist on writing to see what writing brings them.
- Han Yan: Alibaba front-end technology expert, updated his blog for 5 consecutive years
- Hollis: Alibaba technical expert, 200,000 fans public account owner
- Frank: initiator of Wuhan2020 open source project, personal blogger
Why should I start writing?
Hollis: Writing makes me think, discussing technology with like-minded friends
After graduating in 2015, I joined Alibaba to engage in back-end development work. It was also this year that I wrote my first article. The content was the "face-to-face experience" I summarized after participating in the Ali school recruitment. Because at the review stage before looking for a job, I read many interview summaries of other people, which helped me a lot. Writing this article on the one hand wants to make a summary of my school recruitment, on the other hand, I also hope to help others.
Since this article, I have received a lot of comments, and many people have come to me to discuss technology in private, and I find that writing has brought me a lot of fun. Through writing, I can think about myself, summarize myself, and discuss techniques with like-minded friends, so I started to stick to writing.
The content I wrote at the beginning was relatively simple. It was just a summary of some of the problems encountered in my work. Gradually, I began to take the initiative to learn something, and then the content of the article gradually evolved into principle analysis, best practice, etc.
At first, the article was only published on my blog (hollischuang.com). Then by chance, I found that readers on the official account could have more interaction, so I synchronized my article to the official account (Hollis) , Now the official account has accumulated nearly 200,000 readers.
Last year, I also sorted out some of the content I wrote, and published a book "Three Courses for Programmers" with my friends, in which I wrote a lot of my own experience and thoughts.
Han Yan: Writing is my work log, which can help the product bring users
As programmers, we encounter various technical problems every day. When I encounter a trickier problem, I will not rush to solve the problem, but will record the problem clearly, including the code and error log , Screenshots, and even the problem-solving process and some reference links. These contents plus some knowledge points on the principle level, a work log recording problems is actually a blog. So, the blog I just started, which is similar to the work log, is still quite simple.
Later, after graduating from graduate school, I chose to start a business with my friends. I don't know much about operation in the early stage, and I don't know how to do the user growth. Later, I found that I was good at blogging and could bring many users to the product, so I developed the habit of writing.
I have translated a lot of blogs and created a lot of originals. I have written some popular blogs, and I have also written some naive content similar to the title party. However, looking at it in order, the writing level has been improving. After coming to Ali, I wrote an article "The Meaning of Writing", and also shared with the team "Those Things About Writing: Han Yan Talks about 100,000+ Thinking Behind". I really like writing, and I feel that writing is very rewarding.
Frank: I use writing records to develop "black technology" and share my thoughts
Time went back to four years ago. After graduation, I became a game development engineer and entered a whole new field. I am exposed to new things every day. In addition, there are a large number of "black technologies" that are difficult to see in regular Internet development. ", dizzying. Since then, there has been a habit of writing. Since many technical details are not suitable for external use, many note-taking softwares, such as Evernote, were used for recording.
Later, I started to carry out some development work in the open source circle, and I still maintained the habit of Evernote to record my work content, but due to the open source of open source, many times I very much hope that these ideas and content can be shared, so the blog becomes A better choice, which is why blog (blog.frankzhao.cn) is now used for writing records.
What are the benefits of writing as a programmer?
Han Yan: Writing is a long-term investment in yourself and the best personal brand
Writing is a thing of long-term value, which is similar to fitness and reading. I think most people agree that no matter how busy you are at work, you should continue to exercise and read books, because this is a long-term investment in yourself, and many people do the same. In my opinion, writing is actually the same, but few people will realize it, and even fewer people can do it.
1) Improve work efficiency
The most important professional skills in writing. I like writing work diaries. From another perspective, my daily work is not just writing code, but writing work diaries, such as technical issues, technical solutions, communication memos, meeting minutes, and everything related to work. I will write down the content. Before communicating with colleagues or asking for help, I will write a complete document, so the communication will be much more efficient.
2) Writing is learning
Writing is the most effective way of learning. The principle here is the Feynman learning method, in which the input is forced through the output. Because we will find some of our knowledge blind spots and thinking blind spots in the writing process, if we can calm down and study them clearly, and then express them in the most accessible language, this is actually a good opportunity to learn and improve ourselves. Writing actually exercises the ability to think, because expressing a point of view is relatively simple. How to express the point of view clearly, completely, deeply, and structured 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 its rules of the game have not changed: monetization through traffic. If the article is well written, there will be traffic if there is readers, and the traffic can be realized. The rise of many "grassroots" authors since the media age is also the reason. Now is the video era. The medium for expressing content has changed, but the essence has not changed, because the gold content of video content depends on the copy. As a programmer, there is no need to make money by writing, but it is still very important to build a personal brand through writing, which is very helpful for job hunting, recruitment, peer communication and future entrepreneurship.
Frank: Writing allows you to find the whole picture of the problem from another angle
As far as I am concerned, the first few years of work were mainly based on recording technology, but later, especially during the last year of Ph.D., more writing occurred in social science disciplines. There are many benefits to writing consistently:
1) Record technological growth
Writing allows you to better record the process of technological growth, and reviewing often will lead to more growth. Although I am no longer doing game-related development work, I am glad that I had a lot of notes that allowed me to review some technical details and design concepts. These concepts are in fact common in many scenarios and can be very Development work in other areas after good guidance.
2) Find the whole picture of the problem from another angle
Many times you think you understand a technical point, but when you express it in words, you will find that there are many blind spots that you may have overlooked. For example, you are solving a specific problem at work. When you solve the problem, you think you understand. But when you use words to record, especially when you put yourself in the perspective of a reader to read, you will find things that you have overlooked, such as the specific environment, version, problem scenarios, dependencies, etc., when you use words to go. When recording, it will deliberately supplement these contents, and these constitute the panorama of solving this problem. And as far as I feel, the growth in the recording process may be much greater than the growth in simply solving the problem.
3) Improve writing ability and logical arrangement ability
Writing ability is more than just a writer’s need, especially in this increasingly open era, writing is the basis for adoption. Practicing writing skills can not only help you communicate better with others, but also a process of sorting out logic. Good technical articles also need to have excellent logical layout, from the shallower to the deeper, layer by layer. And believe me, this is a very important ability in any job, including ordinary programmers.
4) Sharing makes your article "appreciate"
If you write an article and share it with others, the "price" of this article will be more than what you get, and it will feel better to help others. Before a graduate student, I had the opportunity to modify the source code of JavaMail to support the HTTP proxy server that requires basic authentication for mail operations. At that time, JavaMail only supported the Socks proxy server. Until now, I still occasionally receive emails asking me for implementation details, and I can feel that I am really helping others. Unfortunately, I didn't understand open source at the time, otherwise it should be able to help more people.
Hollis: Writing improves technical skills and can help more people
1) Technology improvement
In the process of writing an article, I will find ways to ensure that the content written is correct, so I will consult a lot of materials. In this process, I will learn a lot of knowledge and can improve my technical skills. Especially when writing a series of articles, you can perfect your knowledge system. As the saying goes, "teaching is the best learning."
2) Constant error correction
No one writes things that are completely right, so sometimes the finished article will receive some different opinions. At this time, you can help yourself correct mistakes and continuously improve yourself.
3) Help yourself to remember better
Many people will find that there is a phenomenon that a piece of knowledge is forgotten after a while after learning it. Once you have a blog, you can solve this problem, and you can write your knowledge into the blog with your own understanding. On the one hand, you can strengthen your understanding and memory, and it is also convenient for you to look back and review in the future.
4) Improve personal influence
Because I write by myself, I can greatly enhance my influence in the industry. Because I have written a lot of articles and many programmers have read my articles. I have roughly counted the number of readings of my technical articles on the whole network. There are tens of millions. In recent years, colleagues from the company have often come to me and ask me: Are you Hollis? So you are Hollis? I have read your article and so on.
5) Help others to achieve themselves
When I first came into contact with Java, I always wanted to find a learning path, but I never found it, so I used my business time to summarize the learning path of a Java engineer-"The Road to a Java Engineer". This article has now been read by millions of people, and I have received many comments, saying that it is of great help to them. In the past two years, readers have often left messages on my official account and blog background, saying that they have found good news about a job in a major factory and so on because of reading my articles. Seeing that my little effort can help many people, I feel a sense of accomplishment.
What extra surprises does writing bring to you?
Han Yan: Better career development and awareness of the world
The reason why I came to Ali was also because of my articles, because the supervisor read my blog and learned about the products I made, and then invited me to come for an interview. In fact, I do the same for recruiting people myself. If your blog is well written, I will pay special attention to it.
Writing has significantly improved my reading ability. In the age of information explosion, how to identify the content that is really worth reading is quite important. 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 writing routines, I know which words are really valuable, which words are just the author’s words, and which points are missed by the author.
Hollis: Making friends, recruiting and publishing books
Because of writing, I have met many like-minded friends, many of them are programmers, but also authors of professional books and bloggers of well-known blogs. There are also many readers from various Internet companies with different backgrounds. Some of them are big cows with rich work experience. In the process of communicating with them, they can learn a lot by themselves.
Because I have my own blog and official account, and I have accumulated many readers, I can receive a lot of resumes every time I post recruitment information. Recently, I have helped the team recruit several new colleagues. Because my nickname in some recruitment articles is also Hollis, I have met several times. I "hooked up" candidates on the recruitment website and were asked: Do you have an official account?
Because I write a blog and have many readers, editors of publishing houses often find me asking about publishing books. There were friends who found me who wanted to publish a book together. In 2019, I published a book "Three Courses for Programmers" with my friends. After that, I also published many free e-books: "The Soul of Java Development Manual 13 Questions", "The Soul of Java Development Manual 15 Questions", "The Road to a God of Java Engineers-Basics" and so on.
Frank: Embarking on the path of open source research
Personally, I may be a less common classmate among programmers who prefers social science records. To say surprises, it is better to say that it is a subtle change.
Through writing records, gradually deepening my understanding of social sciences and understanding of the history of human writing is the very important reason why I finally embarked on the path of open source research. Looking back, every tiny habit will reshape yourself over the years and move your life in a completely different direction. And writing, or the attitude of lifelong learning behind the writing, will bring unlimited possibilities to everyone.
Every programmer should try technical writing. Once you start, you will find that your growth rate is increasing, and the world behind your words will become different. Every programmer should not be limited to technical writing. The understanding of the world, history, and humanities also needs to be recorded and shared. I hope that when writing allows you to face the screen, not only the code, but also the stars and the sea.
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