Getting the message accross (and yearly blog redesign)
Developers change their blog design or platform too often. Why should I be any exception? I want to create pleasant reading experience for my readers and pleasant writing experience for me, therefore I switched to Pelican (static site generator) to be able to use my favorite editor (Vim) to write.
Sadly I had to replace my previous platform, Plone. Lately I got a bit disconnected from its development, since I changed the job, which doesn't require any work with Plone. Besides it looked less likely that I could turn Plone into something I would enjoy writing in.
Everything can be learned
Since my early days as a developer I was really interested to learn how to write. That feeling still didn't wore off. And I don't mean how to write documentation for the code. As developers we communicate a lot in written form. I would dare to say that this is number one form of communication (be it irc, twitter, email or blog posts). None of the conferencing tools will replace this in any near future. That said, in order to share your ideas as a programmer, you will sooner or later have to share them in a written form. Being able to share ideas to many other developers is a skill, I would consider it as important as coding.
Good developer == Good writer
My early attempts to write are a bit embarrassing (you can probably find them online somewhere). A kind of thumb rule, to master something, usually means putting 10.000 hours of practicing it. I haven't reached 10% of that in my whole blogging career.
My goal is to be able to express my ideas.
I don't expect I will write a book or similar. My goal is to be able to express my ideas and write them down without losing hours to do so. I want writing to come to me as natural as I write code.
I thought, to become a good writer, I first need to become very good at language I'm going to write in. Lately I change my mind, I think it is only partly true. I think native speakers have a lot harder time to dumb down their writing, than me as I only need to learn Simplified English.
Most common language online is not English, it is Simplified English.
No goals, cause I suck at them
In the past I set goals, to write X number blog posts per week. This time I just want to write, without thinking how much. I will try to write as much possible and not only about programming. I'm curious if I'm able to do this.
Any tips on writing are more than welcome.
Ping me on Twitter and let me know of any bugs in design. I just tested it in few browsers I have at hand and it looked OK.