Whenever a friend of mine is interested in dev.to I tend to encourage them to come give it a try for a bit and even start writing, but most people think about it for a second and then say:
"I just don't know what to write about, I'm not that great."
- Someone Who Talks In Italic.
So, what made you take that first step? Maybe your reason might make sense to others that are still on the fence.
Top comments (23)
I was looking somewhere to write for a long time now and dev.to seemed to me a good place to write, only developers and very friendly. It was a good choice. :)
I discovered dev.to while I was looking for an open source to contribute! I'm still searching (it is hard to find something you are interested in, you can contribute and it is not way bigger than your wildest dreams), but at least I found home for my writings. :D
Great to have you!
Great topic!
Iβd been posting on my site but was inspired by a colleague who was posting on medium as it was much more public. I took the plunge about a month ago to start posting here and now am really happy I did. Everyone is friendly and helpful. Iβm not a developer yet but still have something to offer.
I really like the idea of documenting your journey. It kind of takes the pressure off, I don't have to come up with some crazy interesting idea or make a really long formal essay. It can be just me writing about something I learned and how I learned it.
A cool side effect about this "learning in public" thing is that you can help other people. Your content may teach them something new or maybe warn them about something you think is bad.
Whenever i encounter a problem that took me longer than 5 minutes to think about(or google about;)). I said to myself i should write doen the information, maybe someone else have the same problem.
Since 2 weeks i now write them down here as an article.
Two positive things: Everyone else can read them. I have the solution stored for later lookup.
The last one is exactly the reason why I started my blog at first.
I used Evernote but caught myself googling the same things and wanted a way to include my solutions in my search and also make them available to everyone else :)
I really thought a website dedicated to software development-oriented publishing and community would be a good idea and that people would like it. So I made it and wrote a post.
Hey Ben!
Can you link the first ever post published?
I started with interviews
First ever DEV post:
Christopher Chedeau on the Core Philosophies that Underlie React
Ben Halpern
I still think interviews are a great type of article. You learn so much by doing them and people are super accessible in this industry. I moved on to other types of content but highly encourage others to consider interviews!
π² 2016! π²
That's awesome. I believe I got here after running into one of @thepracticaldev 's #SheCoded in 2017 on a Twitter thread and got hooked ever since.
Now I gotta read that interview π€
I had been running the Twitter account and I was home for the holidays when I had the inspiration for the whole thing that became dev.to.
Then I went to my computer and typed
rails newπAs you can see by that date it was only about 10 days before the first post was published.
I remembered I lurked for a while, I think I landed here in the first place because I follow Tracy Chou on Twitter and she retweeted something from dev.to's twitter account.
It only took me 5 months from joining to introduce myself ahhaha :D
I read Dev.to since i was in college (just graduated, working since 6 months) and now i like to post any new thing that I learn if it is not trivial, because teach something is the best way to understand it.
I have only 1 post but have a notebook with ideas to future posts, I just want free time to write them π€.
Good post! π¦
I was tired of writing blog posts solely on my own site, to only have 4 people read them, so I heard about this site and decided to give it a shot. My first post had a fair amount of views and comments, and I was hooked!
I was annoyed by how callously friends of mine were talking about the cyclist murdered by Uber's negligent employees, so I wrote about it and remembered Dev from signing up ~6 months prior. Seemed more useful to post it where a few people might partake than to dump it in a void.
This page came as suggested on my facebook feed, I saw lots of cool posts, lots of cool topics, so I wrote some articles too, I felt like this is the right page to write, and to make a presence as a developer π
i have known dev.to for quite some time but never posted posts, until a few months ago i really got interested, and now i come to the site at least once every other day.
Since I really like to write and share, I told myself to publish my very first article.
It's not much, but I saw the publisher aspect, and then I could have feedback on my simple script.
Now I have 4 posts, and I appreciate every feedback, so if one of your friends tell you that dev.to is not for them, on the contrary, it is thanks to these people that the platform discovers new things and new ways to discover them.
Ps: Sorry, Google Trad. is my friend in this text, so if there are faults in it or inconsistencies, it's not me :p
I already had my own blog, but I wrote here too because I had followers, even if I didn't published something, and I felt compelled, more here:
Intro & the end for the Dev.To FTUE
BG Adrian β
I was really looking for people who have worked on a niche technology and wanted them to share tools they use, any kind of products they're built and industries they're working on with that tech.
My #motivation to write here came after the announcement that dev.to was open source, thus brings me a tranquility (different from the medium for example).
dev.to is now open source
Ben Halpern
About content? I try to share content in english, write in my personal blog in Portuguese (native language) and rewrite here in English to have a greater reach of people (for those who do not dominate Portuguese)
I've been writing articles about communication in programming since I started coding. My original writing was an extension of the humorous-essay style I adopted in late high school, as a result of reading Letters of E.B. White, and I just honed the craft over a few years.
Once dev.to started, I was thrilled to have a better platform than just my blog to share my essays, and get intelligent feedback.
Maybe I've just never been afraid of making myself heard? I just figure, in the worst case, I'll find out I said something wrong, and now I've learned something new. In the best case, I can share my own knowledge and receive confirmation that I do know what I think I know. Either way, it's a win.
Of course, it helps to have a supportive platform like this. There are few communities I will write for, out of a basic sense of self-respect; no one likes to post if they're certain to be assassinated for it. Dev.to is a safe place to share, make mistakes, and learn! That's why I love it here.