Re:The Silent Majority of Experts
by NickPollard on Saturday July 14, 2012 @10:31AM
(#4244249)
I enjoy writing when I get the chance, but right now, working on my own software project, it's hard to take time away from developing in order to write blog posts. This even though I know that raising awareness about what I'm doing is as important as actually building the product.
I look with awe upon people who manage to create amazing things whilst also writing eloquently about them - I just can't handle both at once.
Exactly. Writing well is hard, and you have to spend a lot of time thinking, writing, editing.
'A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.' - Thomas Mann
I don’t write because I can, I write because I can’t not write. Alas, looking at my Github projects, it seems that I underscore the problem described in the OP. I have done a lot of writing, but how good is my code, really? If I published the exact same Github projects under a pseudonym, would anyone who hasn’t read my writing care?
Re:The Silent Majority of Experts
by jamesbritt on Saturday July 14, 2012 @12:35PM
(#4244624)
I don’t write because I can, I write because I can’t not write.
That seems a better definition of a writer than the Thomas Mann quote.
If I published the exact same Github projects under a pseudonym, would anyone who hasn’t read my writing care?
You can pull a Stephen King and try it. Start rolling out new code under a new name. See what happens.
I think, however, that you'd run into the problem of getting lost in a sea of code, regardless of the quality of your work.
In short, being technical (and pretty decent at it at least), public writing just Isn't My Thing.
That said, I find that spending a few moments organizing my thoughts into coherent English for commenting on HN encourages me in the direction of writing and could indeed possibly lead to be blogging. Eventually.