[HN Gopher] The benefits of learning in public
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       The benefits of learning in public
        
       Author : gpjt
       Score  : 294 points
       Date   : 2025-02-24 00:34 UTC (22 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.gilesthomas.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.gilesthomas.com)
        
       | alpb wrote:
       | I'm working one of such blog posts as we speak. Past few months
       | I've been purely publishing articles in my domain (Kubernetes)
       | that go really deep into things that I've discovered the hard
       | way, or code walkthroughs in OSS codebases.
        
         | kreelman wrote:
         | Well done. Great you've got time for that. Thanks.
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | > Past few months I've been purely publishing articles in my
         | domain (Kubernetes) that go really deep into things that I've
         | discovered the hard way
         | 
         | Could I ask for a link?
        
           | azundo wrote:
           | Looking through the submission history of that user yields
           | https://ahmet.im/blog/index.html
        
       | neilv wrote:
       | I'm imminently posting one such Web page, which took me many
       | person-days to figure out, when I couldn't find the info.
       | 
       | Posting is actually delayed because I'm experimenting with how to
       | do this more sustainably than I have in the past. Which means
       | generating dollars somehow, and also making it harder for "AI"
       | crawlers and services to rip off everything. :(
        
       | pfych wrote:
       | Whenever I fix something or struggle with an issue I ALWAYS write
       | myself a blog post and make sure to cram in the exact errors/SEO
       | Keywords I searched for while trying to glue together a solution.
        
         | bsimpson wrote:
         | Same with posting questions - try to include all the things you
         | searched for, so when it gets answered, the next person can
         | find it.
        
         | tombert wrote:
         | Two days ago, I was looking on how to get Gamescope working
         | with a new computer on NixOS. I searched around, and found a
         | Reddit post about it [1], found that they had a Github Gist
         | attached to it, and _then_ realized that I was the guy who
         | posted it. I had completely forgot that I had done this work
         | already.
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1dahr3g/steamos_base...
        
           | fy20 wrote:
           | That and finding the answer on StackOverflow that you wrote
        
           | reeeeee wrote:
           | That's incredible, I don't know how I would react. It's like
           | finding a time-capsule that you forgot about.
        
         | lazyasciiart wrote:
         | My most useful stack overflow answer is one where I barely knew
         | what I was doing (something back in MVC.net) and while I
         | managed to fix the problem, which was the same as the one asked
         | about, I didn't understand any of the marked "best answers" or
         | how they were relevant, so i wrote out how I'd fixed it in "I
         | clicked here and typed this to match that" terms. Much later I
         | knew enough to realize that of course my answer was exactly
         | what those other answers were saying to do, but mine still got
         | buckets of votes from all the other poor folk googling without
         | having yet understood the bindings and views and magic
         | connections between pieces that Visual Studio was making.
        
         | solarized wrote:
         | I also do this.
         | 
         | Still don't know how to respond when i get fucked by LLM
         | authoritarians (Grok, ChatGPT, etc.).
         | 
         | They don't give the traffic back / incentives or even cite us
         | as the source. -\\_(tsu)_/-
        
         | gblargg wrote:
         | Something I wish I had done more. You think you don't need to
         | make a note because it's fresh in your head at the time, but
         | years later, even the context is gone. Expecting to remember
         | arcane solutions to things you do rarely is unrealistic. I've
         | gotten better but still have a ways to go. One thing that
         | removes the barrier is to just have common log to put
         | everything, perhaps with some tags, so you can quickly open it
         | and type your thoughts when they're fresh, without having to
         | worry about packaging it just right.
        
         | michael1e wrote:
         | That's what I do too. The last post I did was trying to figure
         | out how to replace the battery in my baby monitor.
         | 
         | https://www.michael1e.com/how-to-replace-the-eufy-spaceview-...
        
           | theoreticalmal wrote:
           | Our Eufy SpaceView camera just arrived yesterday, I hope web
           | search/AI will point me to this answer in a few years when I
           | need to replace the battery!
        
         | ErigmolCt wrote:
         | That's a great habit! Not only does it help solidify what
         | you've learned, but it also makes life easier for the next
         | person facing the same issue
        
       | swyx wrote:
       | amen, my own journey/version here. most powerful career insight
       | ive ever had, when reflecting on why my career transition from
       | finance to tech went so well. https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-public
        
       | runevault wrote:
       | Always good advice to put back into the world to help those who
       | come after. I've made a few videos in the past to explain things
       | I know others struggled with in Godot and every time someone
       | finds one of them and thanks me for making the concept of the
       | video make sense it puts a smile on my face.
        
       | RajT88 wrote:
       | I post the occasional Medium article about technology and DIY
       | projects.
       | 
       | I wrote a post like this once - an article I wish someone else
       | had written and posted. It has hundreds of views - a steady dozen
       | or so a week. It's too bad I don't have more content like this
       | where I figured out a thing which was largely undocumented.
        
       | mvdtnz wrote:
       | I wish I had done this starting a decade ago. Now, with AI, it
       | feels pointless. These powerful AI tools have slurped all of that
       | valuable information up while simultaneously removing all value
       | from actually posting any of it going forward.
        
         | zem wrote:
         | seriously, just ignore the AI, and create the human internet
         | you want to see.
        
         | protocolture wrote:
         | How have they done the second?
        
         | benatkin wrote:
         | It turns into write the messages/prompts to get the answer you
         | wish you'd received and put it somewhere where it can be used
         | to train the AIs and in the meantime searched by humans
        
         | robocat wrote:
         | If you're writing to help altruistically, then AI shouldn't
         | matter.
         | 
         | If you want recognition, then writing tech articles is a
         | difficult path to help you gain status or become known.
         | 
         | My guess is that you just dislike helping the enemy. I'm often
         | more driven for negative reasons than I am for positive ones.
        
         | netghost wrote:
         | Three reasons to write regardless of whether AI slurps it up.
         | 
         | 1. You will learn more, even when you think you know everything
         | there is to know about the topic.
         | 
         | 2. You can point to a thing you personally created. It's nice
         | to be discussing a technical topic and be able to say, "Hey, I
         | actually wrote an article about that, I'll send you the link."
         | 
         | 3. AI might slurp up some of what you write, but it's a blurry
         | filter over information. Your unique writing, details, and
         | perspective are your own.
         | 
         | Finally, it can be fun or rewarding in the same way drawing,
         | painting, or any other creative act can be. If it's not, then
         | channel your effort into something else.
        
         | iamwil wrote:
         | LLMs aren't good at everything. If you're on the edge of
         | knowledge and taste, it's very apparent. Might as well write it
         | down.
         | 
         | Not at all. That's like saying it feels pointless to write a
         | blog if there's search. Like gwern says, lots of people are
         | probably going to be looking for information through LLMs in
         | the future. If you don't write what you're thinking, you'll
         | likely be invisible or illegible to the future. Might as well
         | write it down.
        
         | ZaoLahma wrote:
         | If your target audience is yourself, there's still plenty of
         | value in writing it down.
         | 
         | Wait long enough and there will be situations where you did
         | something in the past that works really well, but you can't
         | remember anymore what you did or why you did it. An AI doesn't
         | really help you then.
        
       | Brajeshwar wrote:
       | These days, there is always someone who has already written what
       | I wanted to write. So, I write my own version. In the early days,
       | most of my blog posts were inspired by questions on public
       | forums. I reply there and then write a blog post, and then, I
       | just point them to my blog. The articles from my blog from the
       | early 2000s reflect all of that.
       | 
       | For instance, the article on how to open a browser full-screen
       | from IE5 was a roaring success.
       | https://brajeshwar.com/2002/ie-50-full-screen-from-itself/
        
       | shadowgovt wrote:
       | This is the only reason I have a blog. It's letters to myself
       | when I find one of those in-the-gap-between-systems problems and
       | want to describe how to fix it.
        
       | zem wrote:
       | julia evans is really good at doing that. can recommend her blog,
       | both for knowledge and for inspiration: https://jvns.ca/.
        
       | serviceberry wrote:
       | The corollary is that if you find that post, _say something_.
       | Drop the author a note, leave a comment. No one else does. For
       | every YT celebrity, there are thousands of people posting good
       | content on the internet and not knowing if it 's being seen or
       | appreciated by anyone.
        
         | gpjt wrote:
         | That's an excellent point! Every author needs to know they're
         | not posting into a void.
        
           | uallo wrote:
           | I run a tiny blog. Every now and then, I check the server
           | logs. Specifically, the user agent strings. While crawling
           | feeds, most feed readers adjust their user agent string to
           | include how many of their users have subscribed to that
           | specific feed. That way, I know that at least 9 people on
           | this planet see my posts. Myself included, that's 10! :)
        
             | dasil003 wrote:
             | if you put a link in your profile here you might get 11
        
               | ctxc wrote:
               | HN does not do reply notifications, so please send your
               | blog over - my contact details are on my profile. :)
        
         | ketzo wrote:
         | The ~3 times this has ever happened to me, it made my _week_.
         | Cannot recommend enough.
        
           | kristiandupont wrote:
           | (Just to say that I went to your profile to check out your
           | writings but found no link!)
        
         | elashri wrote:
         | One of the reasons I avoid commenting on YouTube whatsoever is
         | the risk that an automated filter flags my comment and then
         | nuke the whole account.
         | 
         | This idea seems similar. I have some accounts on social media
         | that is being used for read-only. That's unfortunate reality.
        
           | jmercouris wrote:
           | This idea is not related to _avoiding_ commenting. The Author
           | is suggesting you comment.
        
             | elashri wrote:
             | I understand that. I'm just saying that this is the reason
             | I avoid commenting even when I want to follow author
             | suggestion. I agree with the author.
        
           | bell-cot wrote:
           | A fair number of YouTubers also have their own web sites,
           | social media accounts, or other easy-ish ways to comment.
        
         | doublepg23 wrote:
         | I reached out to a person on Gemini in 2021 and we've spoken
         | basically every day since. You never know what kind of
         | connections are out there unless you try.
        
         | netghost wrote:
         | There was a blog I followed and really admired ten or fifteen
         | years ago. One day I was reading one of his posts and in the
         | middle of it was an exuberant note of thanks for an article I
         | wrote doing a close read of Ruby's TSort package.
         | 
         | Super niche, mostly irrelevant to all but a vanishingly small
         | number of people, and yet I had proof that someone I admired
         | found it useful.
         | 
         | It's been years, and it still makes me smile when I think of
         | it.
         | 
         | You never know what impact you might make on others.
        
         | 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
         | A guy posted about how to fix a broken car socket (cigarette
         | lighter or whatever you call them) on a 1999 Honda Civic.
         | Apparently there's little... Transistors or something under the
         | glove box. Never knew they were there. It was like a 50 cent
         | fix. Would never have known if this person hadn't posted. I did
         | drop him a note of thanks
        
           | jayd16 wrote:
           | Fuses not transistors.
        
             | 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
             | That sounds right. Couldn't remember
        
         | wizardforhire wrote:
         | Case in point
         | 
         | Total party skills, arguably the most balanced astute
         | commentary of current events... definitely that I've come
         | across. Hidden behind a game master facade.
         | 
         | https://youtube.com/@totalpartyskills
        
           | cess11 wrote:
           | Judging from a few of those "psychopolitics" videos it's a
           | far right activist.
        
             | InDubioProRubio wrote:
             | Aint everybody - inflation, inflation, inflation..
        
             | wizardforhire wrote:
             | Really? Thats what you got out of that? Please go a little
             | deeper before being so dismissive.
        
               | cess11 wrote:
               | If you want to claim this person is not a radical
               | reactionary, please share some evidence of this instead.
        
         | adityaathalye wrote:
         | 100 upvotes, if I could. There is too little positive feedback
         | in peoples' lives, if any. For this reason, I habitually cold
         | email people who's stuff has moved me in some way (think, feel,
         | pause etc...). Universe knows, I need it too :D So I put a
         | "standing invitation" [1] front-and-center on my site, copying
         | Derek Sivers and patio11. I get maybe a handful of "hello from
         | an Internet stranger" emails, but every time it makes my day /
         | week / longer if the conversation rambles on languidly. Email
         | is so great for slow-mo thoughtful banter.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.evalapply.org/index.html#standing-invitation
        
           | 7thaccount wrote:
           | Glad to hear that other people do this as well. I very rarely
           | get a response (not the intent), but hope it makes at least
           | someone's day.
           | 
           | I've done this for a few books, two video games, and a
           | composer. One of the smaller indie studios wrote me back a
           | nice email about how much it meant to them.
        
         | nindalf wrote:
         | I've gotten a few emails about my blog and without exception
         | they've all made my week.
        
           | ctxc wrote:
           | Come on, you have to link your blog on your profile!
           | 
           | HN does not do reply notifications, so please send me a link
           | - my contact is in my profile :)
        
         | jamiedumont wrote:
         | I did this recently when a blog post described the exact, very
         | niche issue I was having with a production server. This post
         | described the symptoms of the issue clearly and included a
         | flow-chart of required fixes. There was no preamble, just clear
         | guidance. It was more an incident management manual than a blog
         | post, and it saved me a lot of Googling under considerable
         | stress.
         | 
         | I sent the author a quick thank you, explaining how it helped
         | me in my hour of need. Exactly as others have said here, it
         | goes a long way to making the effort of blogging worthwhile!
        
         | dcminter wrote:
         | Quite right. My late father used to do free audiobook
         | recordings for LibriVox1 and while I know he enjoyed their
         | forums, after he died we discovered a little clutch of _hand
         | written_ letters from people who had enjoyed his recordings. It
         | warms my heart to know how pleased that would have made him and
         | was one of the brighter moments when clearing out the family
         | home.
         | 
         | These signs of appreciation are, themselves, truly appreciated.
         | 
         | 1 https://librivox.org/ - if you'd like to hear him then try
         | The Prisoner of Zenda: https://librivox.org/the-prisoner-of-
         | zenda-by-anthony-hope/
        
         | ErigmolCt wrote:
         | Absolutely. A simple "This helped me, thanks!" can mean a lot
         | to someone putting effort into sharing knowledge.
        
         | rolfus wrote:
         | I do this!
         | 
         | About two years ago I wanted to replay a game demo I remembered
         | from an old (early 00') computer magazine demo disc. The actual
         | game was nowhere to be found anywhere on the internet, but I
         | did locate the developer and sent him an email.
         | 
         | Turns out the game was never actually released - its only
         | public existence was as a demo game alongside a bunch of other
         | games and software. He still had the installer for the game,
         | which was small enough to fit as an attachment in the reply he
         | gave.
         | 
         | He didn't say, but I got the distinct feeling that I might have
         | made his day asking about that game he made more than 20 years
         | ago.
        
         | datadrivenangel wrote:
         | This! A tiny response lets people know that their work is at
         | least noticed!
        
         | InDubioProRubio wrote:
         | Even better drop them the discussion link.
        
         | HPsquared wrote:
         | I throw out upvotes like candy, but a word is worth 1000
         | clicks.
        
         | nicbou wrote:
         | Yes please! This sort of feedback keeps me going through the
         | harder times. I could have sold out a million times if it
         | wasn't for the feedback of grateful readers keeping me on the
         | right path. A kind comment never fails to make my day!
         | 
         | I made it a habit of showing gratitude to content creators, as
         | well as to open source maintainers.
        
         | anupmm wrote:
         | Hear hear!!
        
       | tombert wrote:
       | I haven't blogged in quite awhile, and I don't know why. I've
       | done what everyone has done and started five or six blogs and
       | then abandoned them, but never more than that.
       | 
       | Anyone who has seen my HN history knows that I'm not averse to
       | writing out large quantities of text spouting out my dumb
       | opinions on things, and I don't think I'm a terrible writer or
       | anything. I think at least some of my longer HN comments could be
       | converted into blog posts with just a little effort, but for
       | whatever reason it has never really stuck with me.
       | 
       | I guess part of it is that HN is a lot more conversational, or at
       | least when I write a comment here, I'm writing it either a) in
       | response to someone or b) with the expectation that someone might
       | respond to me. For whatever reason, having that bit of social
       | interaction (with the relatively technical and educated audience
       | of HN) is enough to lower the barrier for me to write something.
       | 
       | I think if I already had a blog that was relatively popular, I'd
       | also find it easier to get into the mood to write a more
       | organized blog post, if for no other reason then there would be
       | an automatic minimum-interest in whatever I write and then it
       | would feel less like I'm shouting into the void.
        
         | iamwil wrote:
         | Just cut and paste whatever you wrote in comments into a blog.
         | it'll help you get over the mental hump.
        
           | tombert wrote:
           | I might be able to do that with root comments, but a lot of
           | my HN stuff is replies, meaning that there's context attached
           | to what I'm writing.
           | 
           | This of course does not mean that I couldn't fairly easily
           | edit them to provide such context and "blog-ify" them, but
           | that requires a bit more effort that I generally want.
        
       | 6stringmerc wrote:
       | It's a rush to feel appreciated when somebody takes the time to
       | enjoy your craft - be it writing, cooking, or developing a tool.
       | It's deflating to put something out there and it simply
       | disappears into the ether, never to be recognized nor celebrated.
       | 10 years into my Medium account I've experienced both and at this
       | point, I simply can't quit because writing is my journey and
       | audiences are fickle. So be it, such are the terms and conditions
       | of the craft.
        
       | mhlakhani wrote:
       | This echoes well. The most popular posts on my blog are things
       | where I wrote things for myself (e.g. reflections on my career),
       | rather than trying to orient them for an audience or maximum
       | clicks.
        
       | varun_ch wrote:
       | I like this idea - even for little tips I find along the way when
       | trying to solve challenges.
       | 
       | But then the new issue I have is I end up cluttering my blog with
       | these lower effort posts that get in the way of the longer
       | pieces. How do others solve this? Like separate feeds or
       | something?
       | 
       | Here's an example: https://varun.ch/posts/macos-keyboard/ I don't
       | think this should be among by "posts" but do others have a
       | "firehose" section or something, for random thoughts and tips?
        
         | ozbonus wrote:
         | I think this is good use for microblogging platforms like
         | Mastodon and the others, to which you can link to from within
         | your blog. If you've written a lot of mini-posts[1] that fit a
         | theme you can edit them together into larger blog post
         | eventually. If you have complete control over your website you
         | could even feature some of your most recent or popular mini-
         | posts on your front page.
         | 
         | [1] I don't know what the best term is to describe theses kinds
         | of posts that distinguishes them from long form blog posts.
         | What do people do on Mastodon--toot? I'm just going with mini-
         | post for now.
        
       | some_furry wrote:
       | Blogger beware: You can be a victim of your own success if you're
       | not careful.
       | 
       | Every time I follow this sort of advice, whatever I write
       | inevitably becomes immensely popular and I end up hearing from a
       | lot of people that whine loudly about my furry blog having furry
       | art on it.
       | 
       | (Most recent example:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43105421)
       | 
       | It's exhausting and if you don't reply on news sites, they'll
       | send you social media messages and emails too.
       | 
       | And if you'd like a poignant example of a time I followed this
       | sort of advice, I wrote this one after I failed to understand why
       | some applications were using HKDF different than I intuited it
       | was meant to be used, and a _formal methods_ guy had to explain
       | it to me because I was asking very loudly. It has since been
       | cited by the Python cryptography library docs:
       | https://soatok.blog/2021/11/17/understanding-hkdf/
        
         | UncleEntity wrote:
         | People will complain no matter what you do...death, taxes,
         | stupid people on the internet.
        
           | some_furry wrote:
           | You're not wrong, but I felt these words of caution are
           | something anyone should be aware of should they pursue TFA's
           | advice.
           | 
           | If you're doing it for intrinsically valuable reasons (i.e.,
           | for yourself), wonderful!
           | 
           | But if you're doing it to try to overcome writer's block or
           | establish themselves as a recognized name in a community,
           | there are downsides that people don't tend to talk about much
           | because they might sound ungrateful (especially if they
           | financially benefit from their popularity). I, individually,
           | have no such monetization incentives at play.
        
         | vonunov wrote:
         | Geez, shove it down my throat, why don't you?
         | 
         | I'm free all w--
        
       | simonw wrote:
       | This is the philosophy I use for my TIL posts - if something took
       | me a few hours to figure out despite searching for a solution
       | first it's a very strong signal that it is worth writing about.
       | 
       | Here's my most recent one, about using a Tailscale exit node to
       | proxy scraping traffic from GitHub Actions:
       | https://til.simonwillison.net/tailscale/tailscale-github-act...
        
         | quentinp wrote:
         | The article says as much!
         | 
         | > Simon Willison is the master of this and even has a subdomain
         | devoted to his
        
       | muzani wrote:
       | Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange used to be such a good site for
       | this - I'd just ask the simplest kind of question on how to do it
       | and then answer it myself a few days later. It was great because
       | SO would show up on a search; it ranked well on Google unlike
       | personal blogs and public wikis. As a bonus, other people also
       | maintain the answer and it stays up to date.
       | 
       | This was one of my favorites:
       | https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2757107/developing-for-a...
       | 
       | It was a checklist and people would just add on to the checklist
       | as things changed.
       | 
       | Alas, it's not practical to do this anymore, because you'd just
       | get downvoted to -13 under the current administration. Don't
       | build atop other people's platforms, I guess.
        
       | DeathArrow wrote:
       | Trying to teach others will help you a lot in mastering a
       | subject.
        
       | dailykoder wrote:
       | This hits a nerve and my urge to do that gets bigger and bigger
       | by the day. I JUST have to do it (tm).
       | 
       | Recently I have been playing around with the Microchip PolarFire
       | SoC[1] and as I already know, there ain't __that__ much resources
       | available when it comes to FPGA design. But oh man, microchip is
       | a whole other level than Xilinx/AMD or anything Lattice/open
       | source tools related. I fought so many battles to get things done
       | and I finally have some kind of a workflow going and understand
       | the chip. I really like it by now (if anyone wants to dive into
       | hardware-software-codesign, it's a nice budget chip to do it
       | with). But after every battle I fight, I think to myself: "God
       | damn, I should write this one down on a blog somewhere. If I can
       | only help one person in the future, even if it's myself, then
       | that's a huge win". But the lazy (and kinda scared) me won until
       | now.
       | 
       | What if I don't write good enough (because english is not my
       | mother tongue)? What if all I write is obvious to everyone else
       | and I am the only one fighting? What if a friend will see this
       | somehow and laugh at me?
       | 
       | It doesn't matter. I should do it, because I feel like it. Thank
       | you for this post, OP.
       | 
       | - [1] https://www.microchip.com/en-us/development-tool/mpfs-
       | disco-...
       | 
       | Edit: My last few words reminded me of CHarles Bukowski's "Roll
       | the dice". Maybe I should remind myself of that a bit more often:
       | https://hellopoetry.com/poem/68266/roll-the-dice/
        
       | OuterVale wrote:
       | I think that perhaps the most important part of this is that if
       | you write the post you wish you'd found, chances are you'll find
       | it useful again at some point in the future.
       | 
       | So much of what I write has proven itself useful to me again even
       | years after publication. Adding search functionality to my site
       | and including my microblog posts there has extended this further.
        
         | madcaptenor wrote:
         | Also, the act of writing it down helps you to fix things in
         | memory.
         | 
         | But I've searched for things and found my own old blog posts on
         | occasion.
        
         | gpjt wrote:
         | Good point! I can never remember the steps to install the
         | Ubiquiti management app on Arch after repaving my workstation
         | (which I do ever other year or so). But I blogged about it in
         | 2019, so I use that as a reminder.
        
       | iamwil wrote:
       | I have different types of posts to support different habits of
       | blogging.
       | 
       | 1. First, I have classic essays that I wrote by hand. I'll ask an
       | LLM for thematic flow or grammar checking, but it's my thoughts.
       | It's more sporatic, but they're things I'm compelled to talk
       | about and think deeply about. Example is on how visual
       | programming is stuck on nodes-and-wires.
       | https://interjectedfuture.com/visual-programming-is-stuck-on...
       | 
       | 2. Next, I have posts that I write on a schedule. These are what
       | I call lab notes, which I'll post every monday no matter what.
       | These are easy to write because I just recount what I've been
       | doing the past week and what challenges and wins there are. This
       | exercises the muscle of posting something. Example is this past
       | week on type checking https://interjectedfuture.com/lab-
       | note-60-writing-words-and-...
       | 
       | 3. I do write TILs, though these don't occur for me nearly as
       | much at the moment, due to the type of work I'm doing. It's like
       | my own stackoverflow, I guess. Example is on the common footgun
       | of useEffect. https://interjectedfuture.com/today-i-learned/til-
       | message-ha...
       | 
       | 4. Lastly, I have posts where I had conversations with LLMs in
       | depth on a niche topic that I think others would find
       | interesting. If it's a back and forth, at the end of the
       | conversation, I'll have it write a blog post based on what I
       | thought the salient points were. If it's deep research, I'll just
       | post that. I mark it clearly at the top it was LLM generated. The
       | generation can be good enough that it's worth the post for humans
       | to read. But also, in the hopes that the next model might pick it
       | up, as an indication of what's good an interesting. It's
       | basically one single sample eval based on my taste of what's
       | good. Example is how algebraic effects are handled across Koka,
       | Eff, OCaml, and Unison: https://interjectedfuture.com/algebraic-
       | handler-lookup-in-ko...
       | 
       | All's to say to people, there's different modalities of blogging.
       | If you pick just one, you might feel pressure to write when you
       | have nothing to write. But if you don't write you don't get in
       | the habit, which is why I do the lab notes. It makes me post even
       | if I don't have anything to say, or the time to say it.
        
         | DavidPP wrote:
         | Thanks for taking the time to explain your process. I'm just
         | starting out, and so far I was planning to:
         | 
         | - Radar: just cool categorized articles, libraries, apps, etc.
         | that I found during the week and organized in weekly drops.
         | 
         | - Guides: In my mind, those were closer to TIL than real
         | guides, though I couldn't figure out how to name them. I love
         | TIL for that.
         | 
         | - Playground: Forcing myself to share prototypes, snippets,
         | etc.
         | 
         | I also have tons of LLM chats that could become content.
         | Instead of trying to rewrite them, I will just share them as
         | they are (while being transparent).
         | 
         | The main idea, as you said, is to find a modality that works
         | well for me and force myself to write more.
        
       | svilen_dobrev wrote:
       | somehow i can't get myself doing this.. publication stuff.
       | 
       | There are tons of things i have (accumulated) to say, but
       | something is stopping me. Probably the current not-easiness of it
       | (plain html isn't that fun), and the need of investing yet-
       | another-little-of-myself to make-that-easier (software? it's what
       | i breathe), and some kind of tiredness of it..
       | 
       | There, i said it. Maybe one day.. i will.
       | 
       | have fun
       | 
       | https://www.svilendobrev.com/waterfly/
       | 
       | https://www.svilendobrev.com/rabota/specart.html
        
       | drakonka wrote:
       | This is how I've been using my blog for years - writing about
       | something I did to process and solidify that knowledge, even if I
       | think it's something silly that most other people already know or
       | won't find interesting. I end up getting emails from people who
       | found some random post useful sometimes, which is a fun bonus.
       | And sometimes when I am googling something my own blog comes up
       | and then I remember I've done or thought about that thing before.
        
       | nicbou wrote:
       | This habit has turned into a lifestyle business for me. I
       | document German bureaucracy for a living.
       | 
       | I gave a talk about the "why" which turned into a long blog post:
       | https://nicolasbouliane.com/projects/all-about-berlin
       | 
       | I really wish more people did this. I make it a point to show my
       | gratitude when I encounter similar resources. One helped me cycle
       | across Korea. Another helped me fix a very specific device.
       | 
       | It's a shame that Google, social media and AI strip mine the work
       | of these helpful people and rob them of their reward.
        
       | Ir0nMan wrote:
       | I'd suggest never starting any story with the first 6 words used
       | in this article.
        
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       (page generated 2025-02-24 23:02 UTC)