Why software developers should care about writing?

My Former Boss was very good at writing and I always admired him for that.

He encouraged me to start writing, but I was always making excuses that I don’t know what to write or about what subject or I’m busy these days, and so on and so forth, but today I decided that I have to start.

I didn’t pay enough attention in my college writing course (I graduated from BIHE, but that’s a story for another post).

I thought to myself I want to be a software engineer so why do I need to learn about writing, but after more than 15 years working as a software engineer, I now see the benefit of writing effectively, but it’s not too late to start.

The big hurdle for me to start writing was picking a subject. I always thought that there are far more experienced engineers at writing whom I admire and follow, so there is no point for me to start writing.

The software industry is vast, however, and even if everyone started writing about their knowledge base and experiences, there would still be room for more. I have come to learn that writing will help you document your knowledge for future reference and practice how to share your knowledge with others more effectively and clearly (remember the feeling you get after reading a very nice and clear post about a particular subject).

I listen to a lot of podcasts and my former boss was suggesting that I can talk about the podcasts that I listen to and introduce them. This turned out to be one subject for me, and another idea came from one of these podcasts that I was listening to where one of the guests was saying that you can write about the subject that you are learning. This inspired me to write about that also (I unfortunately can’t remember the podcast).

I know some stuff about Node.js but I’d like to improve myself and learn more about advanced topics, so my next post will be about Node.js. Perhaps I’ll find a podcast about Node.js and share it with you.

Please let me know your thoughts and experiences and remember this is my first post ;).