How To Blog About Learning Code

Equally someone whose career trajectory was altered past my own writing, I thought I would share the wisdom I learned in writing on software development topics and include some concrete ways to get started with my favorite platform for technical blogging: dev.to.

This article volition teach yous:

• Why dev.to is my recommended platform
• What to write well-nigh (and how frequently to write information technology)
• How to use dev.to to write and publish your first piece
• How to promote your piece in a meaningful way

Permit'south go started!

Notation: this article was written at the asking of our students at Tech Elevator. While this content is relevant to all, some of this content is more than tailored towards bootcamp students or those looking for their first job

Getting Started

Why Write?

As a new developer, at that place are a number of compelling reasons to write virtually your journey:

• It helps you stay motivated
• Information technology helps others learn from your experience
• Information technology builds your own "make" equally a programmer and part of the community
• It can attract the attending of hiring partners and third parties who would like to do i-off work with y'all
• It tin force you lot to learn new things
• People's responses can teach you new things
• Your articles hang effectually for a long time subsequently you've written them, helping people even years down the road

Choosing a Platform

When I first started writing technical articles, I picked Medium as my writing platform. Information technology made sense at the fourth dimension - Medium was well known, had an easy to use and intuitive editor, and information technology just felt very polished.

Every day for a week I would write an article on Medium, Publish it, and go about my solar day.

Just naught happened. Nobody saw anything I'd written, which was a shame given the effort I'd put into information technology.

Then, a fellow member of the customs I'1000 connected with on LinkedIn suggested Dev.to, and it changed the way I wrote going forrad.

What is Dev.to?

Dev.to (which stands for Dev Together), is a blogging site devoted to people trying to learn to code and learn new things together. Unlike other platforms, Dev.to'south leadership is focused on growing a customs together, promoting and elevating its members, and sharing the very all-time content with all.

Dissimilarity this to Medium where in gild for your article to be read, you need to either already have a following or Medium or some other publication within Medium has to cull to promote your pieces.

With Dev.to you get a lot of customs support, suggestions, and abiding encouragement - plus the occasional free plugs for your content if the quality is good plenty.

Dev.to is a gratis platform and my number one recommended starting point for new development bloggers.

Create an Account

Presently, you can sign in to Dev.to with either your GitHub account or your Twitter account (or both). Both accounts are things I strongly recommend you accept if yous want to be active in the online technical community.

Go to https://dev.to/new to become started connecting your accounts and logging in for the first time.

Configuring your Account

Once y'all take an account, click on your profile in the header and choose "Settings".

From there, I recommend entering in as much data as you'd like on the Profile folio - peculiarly location, Twitter handle, and open to work status.

Next, click on UX in the sidebar. From here you can modify the site theme to your choosing and any font preferences you have.

Please as well make sure that your editor version is "Rich + markdown" as this volition ensure that the screenshots and instructions I share match your own experience.

Writing your First Article

Determine When to Write

Now that you take your business relationship, you need to beginning thinking about what you're going to write and how frequently.

For frequency, I'd recommend starting with a postal service every other week or every month as an initial expectation. This is particularly relevant if you are a Tech Elevator educatee reading this guide, equally our xiv week program is fairly intense and you desire to reduce other commitments while undertaking that program.

Once you get into the catamenia of writing articles, if you desire to increase your frequency, go for it, but my general advice is to not get more than oftentimes than twice a week.

Picking a Topic

As far every bit what to write almost, if you're a newer developer or someone learning to code, I recommend writing about your journeying.

Specifically, y'all tin can write about:

• What about your unique background helps you as a programmer
• What the hardest parts of learning programming are for you
• What "mental tricks" you learned to aid learn new concepts
• What y'all want to build with technology, in one case you've learned enough and built up enough skill
• The things about the journey that frustrate you and what y'all're doing virtually them
• That side projection y'all're working on
• How yous see your own code and approaches to programming improving over time
• That new library, tool, or technique you only learned about and how information technology changed your mindset as a new developer

Yes, most things you can choose to write about someone has already written about, but it turns out that this is just fine. You offer your own unique voice at your own unique time.

Trust me, offer your voice and someone will find it useful.

Writing an Commodity on Dev.to

To become started, click the large "Write a postal service" button in Dev.to's header.

This should take y'all to a very minimal page where you can ready the post championship, add some tags, write some content, and upload some images.

Choosing a Title

Titles should exist brief and informative and tell the reader all they need to know for if they'd like to read your content. A good championship for a new developer mail might exist "From Mechanic to Code Monkey", "Seriously? JavaScript Really Works this Manner?", or "Accept Semi-Colons, Will Travel".

Have some fun with it, just go on in heed that the more yous write, the more you lot'll learn how to write catchy titles.

Choosing the Appropriate Tags

Next, information technology's critically important to add some tags to your post. Tags are essentially buckets of related content. This commodity is tagged as:

• Beginners
• Tutorial
• Writing
• Career

People looking for ways of getting started in things tin find this commodity by looking in Beginners or Tutorial and people looking for communication on Writing or Careers volition similarly exist able to observe information technology.

For you, the tags you'll employ volition depend heavily on the technologies you're talking about and the code y'all're sharing, but I do recommend using the maximum of iv tags - as long as they make sense to use in the context of your article.

I recommend checking out the Tags Page for a list of popular tags. This is as well a good place to follow tags that interest yous in order to see articles near them in Dev.to's main feed.

Outlining your Article

Next, y'all'll want to outline your commodity by going into the content area and adding in a few # My Header and ## My Sub-Header markdown statements with diverse section headers. This helps you lay down your structure and flow before you start writing your content.

If y'all're confused on markdown, check out the Markdown help link on Dev.to's sidebar or click the Preview button at the acme to preview your article without publishing it.

Using Markdown Effectively

Y'all can also use markdown like *assuming* and **italics** to make things bold and italics or surround things with the backtick graphic symbol ` (the key to the left of the 1 on almost keyboards) to format inline code // like this.

Formatting your Code

For longer code snippets, yous'll want to apply Dev.to's integrated lawmaking formatting.

Start a line with 3 backtick characters in a row, then paste your code below that. Finally, shut things upwards with 3 more backticks. Your markdown should expect something similar this:

Dev.to will at present format your code block:

            public class You : Writer {    public Article Write()    {       render new Commodity("Something Awesome");    } }                      

You can actually get even improve highlighting than this. You tin can apply shorthand for programming language syntax when y'all start your opening triple backtick line. For example, I can blazon 3 backticks followed by cs on my opening block and and then get some better formatting.

                          public              class              You              :              Author              {              public              Article              Write              ()              {              render              new              Article              (              "Something Awesome"              );              }              }                      

Dev.to includes support for many many languages like this, merely you lot may need to guess the shorthand for that language. I recommend trying a few dissimilar things and then previewing them to see if yous go a skillful result.

Including Images

Oft, yous'll want to include images in your articles. This is helpful for keeping people engaged in your manufactures, breaking up text for readability, and showing off visual things like progress on side projects.

To include an image, you'll desire to click the "Upload Image" button in the header of Dev.to'south editor. From there, you lot can select an epitome from your machine and accept information technology.

Side by side, Dev.to uploads this to Amazon's S3 storage area and populates a text box adjacent to the upload prototype button with markdown for the image you but created.

Click on the text box and it should re-create the contents to your clipboard every bit a markdown statement. Paste that content into your article and when you preview it, the image should render properly.

One note, make certain you change the "Alt Text" to something descriptive of your image to improve the accessibility of your article.

Choosing a Cover Prototype

I also strongly recommend choosing a cover image for your article. This image shows upward in Dev.to's feed and whatsoever social links to your article and can make a big departure in whether or not people click into your article.

Additionally, information technology makes your article look much better once you actually navigate into it.

To exercise this, scroll to the top of the editor and choose "Add a comprehend image".

In an attempt to choose the nearly meta image e'er, I've gone with a cover image in this article of a screenshot of writing this article.

In all likelihood, there are times when you lot just don't have a good image to use, and in those situations, I recommend using Unsplash for costless artwork. They have a decently broad pick of images and you tin typically find something compelling, funny, and beautiful to use as your ain header.

Finishing Up

At present you lot're ready to give your article a final review and click publish.

Congratulations! You just wrote your first commodity!

Your journey isn't washed nonetheless, though.

Promoting your Article

Your commodity is only every bit good every bit you make it and you do need to do some light promotional piece of work to get the full furnishings of writing.

Sharing on Social Media

Outset, I recommend linking directly to your new commodity on Twitter and LinkedIn. This will help your existing contacts find it and see what you're up to, but it also gives them an piece of cake way to similar information technology, comment it, and - most importantly - share it.

There are also some interesting hashtags you can apply on social media to help others discover your content. Tags such as #LearnToCode #WomenInTech (if you are) #100DaysOfCode (If you're taking on that challenge), etc. are oft helpful for getting new bloggers discovered.

You can also ping me on twitter at @IntegerMan or on LinkedIn with new manufactures and I'll be happy to accept a wait at them as well.

Suggesting a Dev.to Tweet

Dev.to will proactively promote posts on Twitter, LinkedIn, and potentially other mediums, only it can besides be helpful to give them a nudge.

You tin can do this by going into the article that you just wrote and clicking "Manage" (you will just see this if y'all are logged in).

From there, you lot can whorl down to the "Suggest a Tweet" class. Submit the text of the tweet and click "Share Tweet Suggestion".

The worst affair that happens from doing this is someone says "No, I don't retrieve I'll share this", merely the upside can exist huge for a new blogger.

While you're in there, I also recommend clicking on the feel level of the post and setting it to the appropriate level.

What Next?

So, you now have your first blog postal service in the wild and are part of a newer and larger community.

My number one recommendation to y'all is to stay active. Read what others write on Dev.to. Continue coding. Proceed contributing.

Get active on Twitter well-nigh engineering science.

Keep writing and others will go along to read. If yous write well enough and long enough, it tin can drastically modify your career - even opening upwards paid opportunities in writing, speaking opportunities, interview requests, and even jobs.

Source: https://dev.to/techelevator/blogging-your-learn-to-code-journey-3kjd

Posted by: porternoust1988.blogspot.com

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