Why should you make a blog website as software engineer

Why should you make a blog website as software engineer

While searching for content on the page, I noticed that almost all software engineers usually make blogs / personal websites, including me. Hmm, I want to review and clarify "Why should you make a blog website as a software engineer". There are some reasons I summarize based on my experience and others.

1.Sharpen your coding skills

I do believe every opportunity to improve your skills, coding a blog website contains a lot of opportunities to learn.

  • Define business requirements: As a customer role, you start defining what you need based on some questions.
    • What are your app's needs? Only landing page or need a blog page, Should I allow users to comment and answer? Or like me, the app should have more features like task management, finance management, 3rd libraries, ...etc.
    • What are your tech stacks? React JS, Angular, VueJS, or like me NextJS. With or without state management.
    • How do you deploy your app? Vercel like me or DigitalOcean, AWS, Microsoft Azure, ..etc.
  • Design a database: you will work through a process from identifying your needs, scopes, actors,..etc. As the app grows. you can use SQL or NoSQL technology and opportunity to learn more about MySQL or MongoDB. 
  • App Architecture: for junior/middle engineers you are usually not allowed to define app architecture even though technical stacks. But on your website, you can define and try different architecture, and folder structures. It helps you gain more structure, features, and system design.
  • Wireframing and Styling: I grouped these skills from an experienced engineer's perspective. I feel that for freshers and juniors, styling is more important and you gain styling with CSS or preprocessor like SCSS, tailwind, or JS-in-CSS, it's a great opportunity. For a more experienced engineer, you can start wireframing (arranging) stuff on your UI so you can have more control and practice a product mindset as well.

2.Build an online presence

I usually joke with my friend "In my country, each square meter has ten developers, especially web app engineers", so you're unable to tell others, especially clients how good you are. I've been on really big projects with really big clients but at the end of the day, none of them know my name. 

So building a blog website is a good refresh. People around you have awareness about you and start developing your branding. It also gives you a full journey about what you have achieved so far. Every time I look at my page, I see a journey, from the beginning as an intern to a fresher, and now a full-stack engineer who can read and learn anything. It's not perfect, with bad company, and layoff here and there, But at the end of the day, I'm proud of myself, maybe you feel the same.

of course, it may become your passive income, hahaha don't think it is huge but at least buying a coffee from the website's ad revenue is pretty fun right? 

3. Creativity

I read somewhere that "Listening to understand others, but writing to understand yourself". It's your playground, so you can do anything, and write any functions, or features you haven't or you want to use it. It helps increase your creativity, and photography, even improve English like I'm doing. I have a bad writing skill so I want to improve it, building blogs is a good idea to improve it.

So I guess that's a lot for the first blog, It's may not a perfect blog or it can't persuade you to create a blog website as a software engineer. But I hope that reading the post helps you gain more energy and enthusiasm in your daily tasks. Also, in case that you have some works need to be done by coding or maintaining, or you have a great idea and transforming into business and need an IT service, I can help. you can contact me. Thank you.

#tuanhuydev, #software_engineer, #web_developement