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What are your reasons for blogging or participating in open source projects? How much is for:
-personal learning
-altruistic giving to the community
-building a reputation
-pure exhibitionism
Should a serious developer have a blog and contribute to open source? Do you consider it part of your resume?
First comment: "all of the above". Having learned a lot from the web and saved time with solutions to problems, blogging is a way to "pay it forward". Eg blog the stack trace of a problem, along with the solution
Poll: Around 3/4 of the participants have a blog
-one reason, and way to get started blogging is to do it for yourself to keep track of things you have learned, a way to "google your brain"
-blogging can be an incentive to learn. If you have not posted to your blog recently then have you learned anything?
-document struggles. Don't feel intimidated - you can make it clear that you are going through a learning process.
-help improve writing skills
How to get started blogging; how to get into the mindset
-Initially, noone is listening so don't feel intimdated
Defensive reason to blog is to avoid falling to the bottom of the heap
Offensive reason to blog is a way to show how you are different
"Resumes are Obsolete" they are all the same. A potential employer can learn far more about someone, and how they think from a blog
Tips for blogging
- wordpress is one blogging tool
- blogging as part of a community site will give greater exposure (search rankings)
- "Be You"
- Be careful - consider whether you want everyone to see what you write
- "Respect the Audience" - stick to technical topics in a technical blog
- Educate yourself on how to be a writer
- Have 2 blogs - a personal blog and a technical blog. One suggestion - cross post just the appropriate articles
Twitter vs blogging - some people have found that twitter has reduced their blogging - it is easier to do.
A suggestion is to use twitter for what you are doing right now, and blogs for things you have learned
Why do open source?
Poll: around 1/3 of the participants have contributed to an open source project
Reasons:
- A great way for new programmers to get experience, e.g. if they are having trouble finding paid work
- Extend an open source project to meet your needs
- Opportunity to do work very different from your day-to-day job
- Expand horizons by work with people other than those you work with on a day-to-day basis
- Personal open source projects can be used as a "proving lab" for new ideas and techniques
How to get into open source:
- Pick a project you use or in which you are interested
- The google summer of code site can give ideas of open source projects that need help
- Subscribe to the developer mailing list
- Volunteers to extend test coverage or work on documentation are especially welcome
- Projects tend to like people who submit patches. The person submitting the patch is passionate about the same thing
Larger projects usually try to build a community of developers. Smaller projects may have a small core group of developers
Other public activities:
- Posting on forums (answering questions)
- User groups
- Speaking at code camps "they will never turn down someone who wants to speak"
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