Blogging

During this course, you will be required to set up a personal technical blog, blog regularly and share some blog posts with your fellow classmates.

But don't worry! It's going to be fun. We promise.

Why We Blog

There are a number of very important reasons for maintaining your blog. Having a personal technical blog demonstrates that you:

• Know your craft

• Understand and are passionate about your industry

• Can communicate through writing

And perhaps you can even build an audience - suggesting you’re pretty darn likeable!

All of these are important down the line (don't worry about it now!) when you are engaging in the job search.

Lastly, and very importantly, by blogging, you are giving back to the development community of which you are now a part. How many times over the past few weeks have you Googled something like "iterate over nested hash ruby" and stumbled upon someone's technical blog? Even if you haven't had that experience yet, we guarantee that over the course of the next few months, you'll follow along with some generous developers blog post to implement something like web scraping with Ruby, setting up the Devise gem in a Rails application or even making your own gem.

As a beginning developer, you'll find yourself taking advantage of the many wonderful blogs out there. That's one of the great things about the tech community--it's full of people who want to learn, and who want to help others learn.

Your blog is your opportunity to give back to the tech community.

Don't assume that, because you are a beginner, you have nothing to contribute. Your perspective as a beginner is immensely valuable, especially to other beginners.

Below, we'll discuss the benefits of blogging and how you can get started.

Benefits of Blogging

Blogging has many benefits for job seekers and non-seekers alike.

For starters, as a new developer, blogging allows you to reflect on what you have learned. (Aka personal development.)

Blogging allows you to cement new concepts and technologies, and provides a platform in which you can go deeper into exploring those concepts.

Learning to code takes lots of practice and lots of repetition. Once you complete one new challenge, you'll have to re-enact what you learned again and again, and even build on it. We've seen students write simple how-to blog posts and revisit their own posts again and again when faced with similar challenges.

Blogging also sets you apart from others in the job search. When an employer sees that you have a blog, it shows you’re unique, passionate, and productive on your own time. And guess what? Hiring managers want to hire people who are passionate and driven.

Even more, blogging shows a lot more than a resume does. On a resume, you simply recall your experience, accomplishments, and what skills you have. With a blog you show what you can do. It ultimately provides more information on you and your personality than a resume alone.

Aside from standing out to employers, maintaining a blog keeps you sharp. It gives you the opportunity to put your skills to use. Skills like developing and designing your website to writing content.

Blogging also gives you the opportunity to engage with other bloggers, and vice versa. It is a great way to engage with others and build relationships with people in your industry.

Blogging is an investment in yourself. It's a space in which you can showcase what you've learned, strengthen and explore what you're learning and contribute to the larger tech community.

And above all, it's fun! Don't think that every blog post you write must be ground-breaking. Your blog is your space to explore what you're learning, and keep in mind that there are a lot of beginners out there that will benefit from you sharing what you're learning at every stage of your development as a developer.

Some Short and Happy Stories About Blogging

While we mainly blog for our own personal growth and to give back to the community, ocassionally, blogging during coursework has led some surprising results!

• One former student, Tracy, maintained a technical blog while she was a student and TA at Flatiron. When Tracy applied to be a developer at Rent the Runway, her future employers checked out her awesome blog and liked it so much, they skipped over giving her a code challenge and advanced her to the final interview stage.

• Another student, Steven, had their blog post picked up by a Medium publication.

• One student from 2017 received a job offer from an employer who found him through his blog.

Getting Started

We recommend setting up your blog on an easy-to-use platform like Medium or Tumblr. Setting up your blog and posting new content should be easy––reserve your effort for writing blog posts and learning to code. However, if you want a bit of an extra challenge, you can try blogging with Jekyll or Octopress. Or, if you're willing to pay a monthly fee, we recommend using Ghost.

Don't hesitate to write your first blog post. Keep it simple. Pick a small topic that you're interested in exploring more, or a concept/technique/technology that you recently learned about that you'd like to cement for yourself. Something like Nested Arrays and Hashes in Ruby or even something a little less technical.

Soon, we'll deploy a schedule of blog posts. Every day three different students will have a completed blog post due that they will share with the class. You can expect to have one blog post due every two-and-a-half to three weeks (but don't hesitate to blog more frequently than that!)

In the meantime, for inspiration, and to get excited about blogging, you can check out the catalogue of Flatiron Student blog posts (you'll be prompted to log in with your GitHub account first).

General Guidelines

• Stick to programming related topics.
• If you are including code examples, make sure to test them and ensure there are no errors
• Do not plagiarize
• No offensive material. Remember, this is a blog that you will be able to use in your future job search.
• Citing any sources is very helpful to your readers.

Don't forget to check spelling and grammar before publishing!