Today I sit here with nothing that inspired me for the Saturday newsletter and I realise that sometimes writing sucks. Well looking through my saved interesting links for later I'm drawn to a few posts on writing.
Writing is Thinking
This is an older post from A List Apart talking about writing as thinking. One of the key ways I try to ensure I've learned something is to write about it. I've found that step even more crucial as I've used Claude Code to help me write an Emacs based RSS reader.
You'll see a series of posts talking about writing elisp, to help walk through the code I've written so that I can have a decent handle on what elisp does and how it works. It's similar to what I did as I figured WordPress stuff out 15 years ago. My blog made my career and I still see benefits from sharing what I've learned.
Writing is my Default
Writing about something I'm learning or struggling with is my default. It forces me to explore the bounds of my understanding, then I read my work as if I hate the writer and want to poke holes in the arguments, which yields stronger writing as I support my ideas.
Writing brings feedback as people email me weekly with more thoughts on the stuff I've written. They ask me questions that turn into blog posts.
I suggest everyone tries to write, or make videos if that's your thing. It will help you further your career and help ensure that you learn more about whatever topic you have chosen to focus on.
Sharing what you learn will also help those around you. Some starting programmer will read a technical post I wrote and learn how to do something they couldn't do before. Hopefully in the future they'll share something they learned.
But what about AI
It may be that my hope someone will read my content and learn something is unfounded though as AI scraps content and feeds answers back without people visiting sources. That's not really my problem though.
Years ago we had cash to pay for long-term airport parking. Eventually with the help of security we found the person in charge of the parking lot at 1am and gave them the cash. As we loaded our 4 and 1 year old in the car and left my wife asked if we really trusted them to give the money to the proper spot. I countered that our job was done paying someone in the uniform of the parking lot company and it was up to them how they treat the cash.
I think the same goes for AI scraping. My job is to share what I learn, for me. So I learn in in a deeper way. After that, the content is out there. My job is done in sharing.