I started blogging over a year ago, now.

And I love it.

Blogging has changed me, in a myriad of ways.

And that’s what I want this article to verbalize.

So here goes!

1. Reinforced My Technical Knowledge

Over a year ago, while I was comfortable with many algorithms and data structures, I didn’t have a great understanding of the advanced ones.

Today, after over nearly 30 fully thought-out, published articles, I can confidently say I have become much more comfortable with advanced algorithms too.

Convex Hulls, Segment Trees, Disjoint Set Union, Bitmasks, Difference Arrays, Matrix Exponentiation, and Dynamic Programming are all in my arsenal and I’m no longer hesitant in using them anymore – and I owe it all to the months of technical blogging, proofreading and verifying, that I had to do.

2. Taught Me Time Management

Technical blogging is a fairly intensive activity. I need to know the ins-and-outs of my blog post’s domain, I need to know what I’m writing, verify what I’m writing, and be able to verbalize what I’m writing and communicate it with either pseudocode or visualizations.

This requres time and patience. Both practically as rare as water in a desert, when it comes to college students.

Being able to work out intricate daily and weekly schedules, and being able to work even in unanticipated situations is a quality I picked up over the last few months, and I believe it will serve me well in the years to come.

3. Improved My Communication Skills

I remember how, months ago, I used to struggle in communicating convoluted algorithms or technical ideas to teammates or friends.

I used to have trouble getting my thoughts in order when I was talking as I was thinking. This even showed during interviews.

But since I started blogging, over the months, I started noticing that I fumbled less. I became more fluent in communicating ideas.

Let me rephrase that.

I could communicate difficult, technical ideas to even the uninitiated, and non-technical people.

That’s a quality, every firm needs in their employees. And evidently, I picked it up without even solely setting out to do so.

4. Taught Me Web Technologies

Hosting this blog and a portfolio website ( https://rameshaditya.com/ ) required me to learn how to host webpages, and how to design beautiful and responsive websites.

I picked up HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap, and most recently, Ruby and Jekyll!

I’ve read up on Search Engine Optimization, Marketing, Google Adsense, UI/UX, Git, and other CSS Frameworks too.

No regrets whatsoever!

5. Given Me Opportunities

Back when I started, just a few articles in, I found an email in my inbox.

This email was from the founder of a tech firm, whose clients were pharmaceutical companies.

He gave me his contact information and invited me to take up a project with his firm, freelance or through an internship.

My point here is,

Technical blogging got me internship offers.

I continued, and after a few more articles, I pinged Topcoder and they were happy to induct me into their own technical team.

Getting into the Topcoder Team was cool enough, but it gets cooler!

I got a sponsored trip to attend Topcoder Open India 2018

That was so much fun! I met some world-class developers, competed with them, ate some tasty food, and had a TON of fun!

6. Enhanced My Public Reach

I’ve had recruiters message me asking about my blog. Interviewers ask me about it, friends ask me about it, people I have never met cold contact me about it.

And that’s great, because I get to discuss topics I love with people I want to interact with, so it’s a win-win!

Best of all, maybe, would be that I’ve got to interact with some really famous developers who also run blogs – ONLY because we both had something in common.

In summary, blogging is a journey I’m glad I undertook. It’s got me to explore my interests, led to opportunities, and helped me make connections otherwise impossible.

Consistent technical blogging has -

• Reinforced My Technical Knowledge
• Taught Me Time Management
• Improved My Communication Skills
• Taught Me Web Technologies
• Given Me Opportunities
• Enhanced My Public Reach

And that’s why, I think every developer should blog.

~ Aditya Ramesh

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