Almost eight years ago I wrote a post called You Should Blog. In it, I made an argument that I still believe in: public, professional writing is somet

Why I'm Writing To You

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2024-11-14 14:00:07

Almost eight years ago I wrote a post called You Should Blog. In it, I made an argument that I still believe in: public, professional writing is something every engineer should try.

The first reason is that over time, I think it's made me a much better programmer. To give you an example, here's an opinion I hold, and how writing helped me solidify it: code coverage, the measurement of the percentage of your codebase that's covered by automated tests, is a poor measure of code quality or team performance. I outlined this in a blog post. You don't need to read it to follow along.

How did I form this opinion? I was on a team where increases in code coverage were celebrated. I voiced my thoughts but didn't have the influence to make a bigger cultural change. So, I wrote about it, and that made me feel better.

You can't write 1,000 words on any subject without stepping into muddy waters like these. So, you look at each one and challenge it, or change your mind. Smart people change their minds a lot. Even if nobody ever read a word you write, you'd be better off going through this process than if you hadn't written at all.