First step

After a few months of hesitation, finally I’ve decided to start writing a blog. Why? There are many reasons that convinced me to make this decision:

• Blogging boosts motivation to study and explore new technologies.

• Teaching is the best way of learning. If you can explain something as easily as it is possible, it means that you understand it very well.

• I want to keep my solutions of problems encountered in work and in my pet-projects in one place. Unfortunatelly, Stack Overflow is not a panacea for all problems. So many times I spent a lot of hours to solve various difficulties. Perhaps someone will be able to use my solution and save precious time. I believe that Dev-karma always comes back.

• I would like to treat my blog as a tech-diary and watch my career progress and changes in time. Furthermore, I can verify my ideas, sharing my thoughts about software development with other people and providing an opportunity to comment on every blog-post. I think that constructive criticism is a good thing and personally I like read or hear well-reasoned opinions about my work. It almost always starts an interesting discussion.

Language choice

Why I decided to write in English?

• I want to reach a wider audience and exchange experiences with developers from all over the world.

• I think that English is a lingua franca in IT world. I read a lot of books and e-books in English version (Polish translations are terrible). I use documentations and specifications written in English. It’s often easier for me to express my thoughts about software engineering in English than in my native language.

• Polish is primary language using in communication in the company I work for. This results from the fact that ITMAGINATION is a Polish company and most of employees are Poles. Those who are not, at the beginning they usually use English, but in the meantime they try to learn Polish (and they do it very well!). Of course, it is easier and faster to speak in native language, but I would like increase my English skills. Practice makes perfect.

Blogging platform

Out of all the blogging platforms I chose Jekyll. It is a static site generator, easy to configure and deploy. Jekyll doesn’t use database and can be hosted for free on GitHub Pages. Posts are created using Markdown syntax, which simplifies a process of text-formatting and allows me completely focus on content.

Further steps

I hope that this post is not the last. The first step is always the hardest, but I’ve made it. Now it’s high time to start blogging!