What do I write about?

Before we start - I'm working on https://cloudash.dev, a brand new way of monitoring serverless apps 🚀. Check it our if you're tired of switching between 50 CloudWatch tabs when debugging a production incident.

I've been asked a fair bit recently:

"How can one come up with ideas for dev.to posts?"
"What can I write about?"
"Why should anyone care what do I have to say?"

Last time I was asked one of those questions was when I was recording an episode of Infinite Loop podcast 2 hours ago (hosted by Will Johnson who you should follow on Twitter immediately).

To be honest - I'm not an expert when it comes to writing. I don't have hundreds of posts published, my engineering thesis took ages to write and I'm yet to write a book.

So why am I writing about writing if I'm not an expert? Why should anyone listen to me?

Because my experience matters.

And so does yours.

If everyone waited until they are a world class expert at React Hooks, there would be at most 5 tutorials out there. Instead, we have hundreds of free tutorials, videos and other resources provided by the community.

Do not be discouraged to write a post about something because "somebody else has already written about it"

No one gets to claim a topic to be their own.

Sure, there are experts in some areas but it's not like Angular Police will storm your apartment if you write a "Hello World in Angular" post without 5 years of experience.

The more resources there are, the better. Everyone has their own way of explaining topics, you never know if your way of explaining GraphQL will finally click with somebody.

Do not be afraid to write about topics you've learned about recently

Seriously - if you have more than 2 weeks [citation needed] experience as a developer, you already have something to write about.

Even better - your lack of experience may be your greatest asset. So many tutorials out there are written from a perspective of experienced developers and they skip over details that may be obvious to them, but hella confusing for beginners (and yes, I'm guilty of it myself).

Because of your fresh worldview on a topic, you get to explain it in a way that connects with someone else who is also a beginner.

Yeah but I don't have the time to write a long, detailed post, check for errors, ask people for feedback before publishing etc.

Then DON'T DO IT.

Don't write long, detailed posts that no one will actually read in entirety because our attention span is terrible and when I see anything longer than "5 min" read I leave a like on Twitter (because I'm sure it was smart) and immediately close the tab, in fact this sentence is so long that I'm sure you've checked a social media website of your choosing in the middle of it.

There's so much values in those quick tips, lessons and posts.

Have you ever read a book that should have been an article itself?

You don't have to write a lot to get your message across.

Consider this:

Have an idea -> Write it down -> Check for typos -> Publish

Learn by teaching

Your posts don't have to be for others. Half of my egghead.io lessons were recorded mostly for myself because I wanted to solidify my knowledge about a topic. I cannot recommend this approach enough.

One more thing: Your posts are not immutable. Unlike Twitter, dev.to has an EDIT button. You can always go back and add more if you'd like!

But your word will be already out there!

In fact, I'm about to hit submit. I may come back to this post later, who knows!

Cheers!