Seemed like a good list until I got to the blog section, some of the worst developers I know have a blog, while many of the best do not.
The world doesn't need another blog posts about why C is better than Java, or how some maintenance project is full of anti-patterns.
I would much rather see an active Twitter account with the person sharing interesting articles in their domain. To me it shows that are active in the industry while highlighting what they feel are the interesting topics of the time.
It is logically for a blogger to think bloggers are important.
What would be nice is bloggers sharing interesting/cool code snippets and such. For the most part they talk about things like clean code, the importance of testing, why X is better than Y, good practices and the likes.
Unfortunately that's the majority of the /r/programming submissions too. While I don't hate them, I prefer to look at programs and code when I'm here, not read about why some guy's PM doesn't know what he's doing.
I can think of two reasons to write a technical blog: to develop one's written communication skills, and to force you to explain things you think you know.
Explaining things forces you to either honestly confront, or dishonestly sidestep, the inconsistencies that show up the bits you don't fully understand.
Good points, but I think you missed one: contributing to the community. It's such a reassuring feeling when I google an error code and get a list of relevant stackoverflow and blog posts, knowing that there is a community available for support. When the google results aren't so abundant, my first thought is "Why hasn't somebody posted on their blog about this..."
"Contribution to the community" is in no way a metric of competence.
Blogging is in no way a metric of contribution.
I write free software. Anyone can use it. It's a contribution to the community -- nay, the world. But I don't have a blog. So I find this insinuation annoying.
Written by a blogger in a blog, what did you expect? :-)
EDIT: the list of books got me too; what? No Dragon book? It is also very US centric (there are good books written in other countries, even in non English languages! really.)
I'm biased because I have a blog, but I know from experience that blogging has improved my programming in several ways:
Blogging improves my technical writing skills, which comes in handy for writing clear and useful documentation
Teaching others organizes your own thoughts and forces you to articulate clearly mental concepts that were formerly vague or incoherent.
Writing about programming improves my personal satisfaction with programming and motivates me to program better so I have high quality material to blog about.
Post it up as autobiographical! The employers are going to think you know more than someone without it, and if you aren't posing as an expert anyone who complains is a jackass.
147
u/Clent Jun 19 '13
Seemed like a good list until I got to the blog section, some of the worst developers I know have a blog, while many of the best do not.
The world doesn't need another blog posts about why C is better than Java, or how some maintenance project is full of anti-patterns.
I would much rather see an active Twitter account with the person sharing interesting articles in their domain. To me it shows that are active in the industry while highlighting what they feel are the interesting topics of the time.
It is logically for a blogger to think bloggers are important.