A new beginning...
I’ve always wanted to start writing a blog but I somehow never got around to do it. I’ve always rejected that idea in my mind. Maybe it’s because it was a bit out of my comfort zone. I always thought that the ideas and topics that I could write about were not original enough.
I think I’ve finally found my way out of my comfort zone and I’m ready to share my thoughts on different topics in software development, and general ideas, with the online community. Since I know how many people are or were in the same situation as me, I’ll share the things that motivated me to start writing my blog.
Good friends
The first thing that motivated me was one of my friends who also started writing a blog about software development. His energy and passion for OSS and sharing in general is something that motivated me the most. I’ve seen how much you can accomplish and improve by just sharing what you’ve learned about and what you are good at. It is a special kind of satisfaction when you know that someone is using some piece of software that you wrote.
Podcasts
When I was working at my last job, my commute to work and back was about 1.5 hours long. That is a lot of time to just be wasted on watching outside the bus windows. I’ve tried to use that time to do useful things like reading a book or reading tech articles but that wasn’t as effective as I thought it would be. The main reason is that you don’t always have a place to sit and read while standing is not comfortable. So I started to look for other options, something that I could do while standing - something that I could listen to. That is when I discovered podcasts. I am currently focused on iOS development and I listened to podcasts that talk about different aspects of iOS development. One that made a big impact on me is the Swift Coders Podcast. In this podcast the host, @Garric Nahapetian, talks with different iOS engineers with all kinds of backgrounds and personalities. Learning about their experiences and their paths as iOS developers made me more motivated to share my thoughts on iOS and software development with others. One episode that I can highly recommend is the interview with @Chris Lattner - creator of LLVM and one of the key creators behind the Swift programming language.
Sharing
As I’ve already mentioned, knowing that someone uses your piece of software or framework and knowing that you helped someone in that way gives you a special kind of satisfaction. The same goes with guiding someone that has the same problem that you had in the past to the solution. Imagine how many hours of development we could save by just sharing our approach to different problems in software development.
Conclusion
In this blog post, I shared my thoughts and motivation on starting to write my blog. Hopefully, some people will find it useful and it will motivate others to do the same.