If you finally found the solution to your coding problem in a deep comment or something after having dozens of tabs open, you should write about it in your own blog.
Really. Describe the problem in your own words and the solution for it, even if the solution seems really obvious now. Doesn’t matter. Give credit and whatever, but use your own words because you will be surprised at how many people will land on it.
Write the blog post you wish you had found.
@ohhelloana Excellent advice!
Yes absolutely! I've found doing this has also really helped as a neurodiverse person as well as giving me a ridiculous back catalogue of posts - half of my blog is this sort of stuff
@www.jvt.me @ohhelloana love that. I’ve been trying to start doing that as I do research!
@ohhelloana This is so true! My most popular blog post in all of last year was on setting up my IDE!
@ohhelloana That was the intended purpose of https://furbasik.de but as you can tell I stopped writing. Now I just make a #Fediverse post instead.
@fell @ohhelloana but do search engines index fedi platforms as well as they might your blog?
I regularly stumble on programmer blog posts and GitHub issues via a DDG or Google searches, can't recall finding a toots or tweets in the same way.
@thorgal @ohhelloana Not yet, but it's possible. I did find fedi posts before. At least on Kagi.
@ohhelloana excellent piece of advice! I have myself benefitted from such blogs and articles after getting stuck at answers from some sites.
@ohhelloana Used to do this. No-one read it. But I found it *really* useful to refer back to!
@ohhelloana Did just this 15 years ago, when I couldn't find a coherent source of truth for the lists of ARM7 opcodes.
To this day, I come up as a first-page hit for "arm opcode map", even though the table is horribly outdated.
I just hope it's been useful.
solution. i finally found the trick i was looking for. thanks for the help
@ohhelloana@mastodon.social ok but what if i don't have a blog and don't want to maintain one
should i write a book instead then
@prisixia @ohhelloana You have so many options these days. Dev.to, bearblog, hashnode, medium and a ton of SSG's. Pick one.
Although, I do recommend a personal website.
https://www.unsungnovelty.org/posts/11/2019/why-do-i-host-a-website/
@unsungnovelty@mastodon.social @ohhelloana@mastodon.social thanks but i'll pass
i'm not a blog person
@ohhelloana I have this when I spend hours figuring out a problem. "This'll be a good blog post once I figure this out."
@ohhelloana If you do this, remember to share the bug fix or a link to the blog post about the bug fix on the Issues tab of the project's Git repository. If the bug report doesn't exist, create one. That way it's easy to find for others.
@Rastal @ohhelloana I do this, yes. This tip actually works for me. I usually document this way, using a memorable title and then just search for it when I need to do the same thing later.
@ohhelloana @SonOfSunTzu given how many resources fall off the face of the Internet over time, duplicating data is actually really important, too.
@TindrasGrove @ohhelloana I recently discovered ArchiveBox ( https://archivebox.io/ ) ... that apparently allows you to easily keep local copies of sites... but I run too many servers as it is.
@ohhelloana Thanks for giving a new perspective to look at things . It helps a procrastinator like me get over my fear of failure.
@ohhelloana @DamonHD Great advice - especially if you write the blog post on a platform that’s compatible with the fediverse! Which I guess is just Wordpress blogs for now, but I’m sure that’ll change.
Come to think of it, wouldn’t it be awesome if Stack Overflow because fediverse compatible?
@Brendanjones @ohhelloana @DamonHD It wouldn't. Stackoverflow is so exclusionary nowadays it's basically impossible to start a new account.
The old content is still there and is useful but new content will necessarily be elsewhere if anywhere.
@hramrach what’s going on with SO that accounts can’t be created?
@pantyhosewimp Accounts can be created but have severe restrictions. These restrictions prevent you from doing most things. And if you are inactive (because of restrictions) even more restrictions are put on your account making it impossible to do anything at all.
@ohhelloana my blog is 90% this
mostly because *I* will look it up again in 6 months...
@ohhelloana Yes! “Write the blog post you wish you had found. “
This is great advice for ANY problem, coding or otherwise, that takes hours to solve, and that you had hoped to find a blog post for!
@ohhelloana I used to write an entire blog along those lines. I documented weird corners and things I discovered while running FreeBSD. I've always meant to get back to it
@ohhelloana I always add a stackoverflow answer as the discoverability is much higher, but deeper problems that span multiple domains (like vim 24-bit colours in DOS), I add to my own blog.
@ianchanning @ohhelloana yes! I do this with CSS and PWAs: It works like a charm. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/70126898/how-to-encode-small-caps-for-abbreviations-using-css-if-the-font-doesnt-support
@ianchanning @ohhelloana Indeed, this is precisely the reason Stack Overflow allows people to answer their own questions
@ohhelloana Yes, but how does one monetise this ?
@ohhelloana I did that for a weird ChromeOS Linux issue, and the only resolution was a Japanese website. As you mention, proper sourcing and all, but felt really good to contribute to the communicate, even if only in a small way.
@ohhelloana Truth. Works for nearly any coding or software issue. Years ago i did a short video on how to close an annoying window in a popular email client, and it got 100k views before they fixed the bug.
@ohhelloana that is the most solid advice I’ve heard for a while.
@ohhelloana Yup , Great Advice My Friend
@ohhelloana If we had a system so that all this hard work was not leeched by people who want to replace us with cheap programs, I'd be more convinced. We need a "only for humans viewing" licence.
@ohhelloana Can confirm. I once debugged an HTTP/2 problem where the server was sending a header with a space (`Referrer Policy` instead of `Referrer-Policy`) and it resulted in a full page ERR_SPDY_PROTOCOL_ERROR in Chrome. Blogged it and some time later I got this email from Bob: "Thanks for writing this web article, This ended up fixing a bug in our code so I wanted to thank the person who provided the solution." It made my day.
@spazef0rze@infosec.exchange @ohhelloana@mastodon.social for years my most readed blog post was about rooting old sony android mobile from Android 2.1 era. It was even linked on xda by mod creators... And i wrote it because at that times i had to re invent it every time i needed it ;-)
@ohhelloana it will help you next time you have the same issue.
Not saying I speak from own experience. But I'm speaking from own experience.
@ohhelloana The post that got the highest traffic by far on my (defunct) blog about vintage books was the one on thawing frozen drain pipes, followed by one about defrosting an International Harvester refrigerator. Clearly people were more interested in vintage home maintenance than vintage books. YouTube didn’t exist yet, and there weren’t a lot of sources of that info… except for vintage books & magazines.
@ohhelloana
Even if it's commercial, in-house knowledge, do it on the local wiki/confluence/whatever!
It really annoys me when people go 'yeah, I've had that too' and not even give you any hints on how they fixed it.
@ohhelloana while I endorse this 100%, the utility of the act is undermined by Google's ongoing enshittification.
@FeralRobots @ohhelloana I 100% agree with the spirit of the advice but making a compromise with whatever publishing platform you find in 2023 is discouraging; and then there’s the lack of discoverability because search, in general, is broken.
@ohhelloana@mastodon.social
That's part of why my tech blog exists ...and as a hedge against references' links/pages going "poof!"
@ferricoxide @ohhelloana and coding examples in YouTube (I do hate those)
@ohhelloana Honestly lately whenever I try to do something that has some level of complication to it, I always try to write something up on my site.
It takes a while - because collecting all your notes/info and presenting it in a useful way is both hard and tedious - but as someone who'd have loved some pointers, I know it's worth putting it there.
Especially because, you know. I might need to remember all that again.
@ohhelloana I had few things on my blog at https://hacknorris.codeberg.page (in posts section)
@ohhelloana
Love this! Going to make it a point to do this more!
Unfortunately for this, most of the code I write is for proprietary situations.
@ohhelloana I’ve only ever done this on one topic and it’s very true. That post took off cause it was reposted on a forum when someone else found it useful.
Totally agree. I can't tell you the number of times that I have "discovered" an answer because I wrote it up and posted it.
No idea if it's helped anyone else, but, selfishly, it's helped me.
@ohhelloana this also works for any problem that take ages to solve but a few minutes to fix when you know it.
@ohhelloana That's why I published my first Medium article last week, as I don't have a technical blog.
Reading that SwiftUI article would have saved me many days. https://medium.com/@gerdcastan/write-two-column-settings-in-swiftui-that-look-and-feel-like-apples-settings-app-c2a27417f3d7
Might be my only post for a while.
@ohhelloana I have such a challenge with this in the work environment.
Had a challenge finding a solution, then found it? WRITE IT DOWN IN THE WIKI so others can know it too.
Discovered an interesting search clause in the SIEM? WRITE IT DOWN IN THE WIKI
Figured out who owns obscure application XYZ on Server017? WRITE IT DOWN IN THE WIKI
So many times people say “How'd you find that info?” SEARCH THE WIKI
@ohhelloana Then land on your own blog post next time you search... Often when you haven't found the answer ;)
@ohhelloana a friend of mine once stumbled upon a reddit post about the exact problem he had. The post was by ME having the same problem before. It was apparently the first search result. If I hadn't edited it and explained the solution there would've been no catharsis.
@ohhelloana this is genius!! What a wonderful way to curb a creative/writers block!! You’re awesome!