In this engaging discussion, Piotr Sarna, a software engineer and open-source enthusiast, shares insights from his book, 'Writing for Developers'. He highlights the common writing struggles developers face and offers practical tips to cultivate a supportive writing culture. Topics include overcoming writer's block, leveraging AI to enhance writing, and identifying valuable writing topics from daily work. Piotr also emphasizes the transformative power of writing for personal branding and career advancement, making it an essential skill for developers.
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insights INSIGHT
Engineers Lack Writing Aspiration
Most engineers have valuable thoughts but don't aspire to write due to various reasons.
Writing culture in companies can bootstrap engineers to share and document their knowledge effectively.
insights INSIGHT
Benefits of Writing Culture
Writing culture benefits companies by attracting talent via engineering blogs.
Authors deepen understanding and can catch bugs through explaining their implementation.
question_answer ANECDOTE
ScyllaDB's Blogging Culture Impact
Piotr's company, ScyllaDB, enforced a blogging culture leading to many technical blog posts.
His blog posts led to conference talks and eventually writing books about database performance.
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Feeling like you have valuable technical insights to share but struggle to put them into words? You’re not alone.
In this episode, Piotr Sarna, author of “Writing for Developers” and an experienced open-source maintainer, shares the common hurdles developers face in writing and provides practical tips to get started. Discover how cultivating a writing habit can not only boost your personal brand but also improve your technical skills and create new career opportunities.
Key topics discussed:
The Writing Challenge: Why many developers who have interesting things to say don’t write and the importance of writing culture in a company.
Finding Your First Topic: How to identify valuable topics from your daily work, even if you think they’re not interesting enough or have already been written about.
Overcoming Writer’s Block: Practical tips to overcome the fear of writing, including dealing with imposter syndrome and language concerns.
Leveraging AI for Writing: How to effectively use AI as a reviewer to find logical fallacies, get feedback, and improve your writing without sacrificing authenticity.
Proven Blog Post Patterns: Learn about effective patterns like the “Bug Hunt” to create engaging and educational content.
Promoting Your Writing: Strategies to get your work in front of a larger audience, from company blogs to social media and content aggregators.
Beyond the Blog Post: Discover how writing can open doors to speaking at conferences and even writing a book.
Timestamps:
(00:00) Trailer & Intro
(02:06) Career Turning Points
(04:30) The Challenge of Writing for Developers
(06:08) The Importance of Writing Culture
(08:36) Piotr’s Journey to Writing Books
(11:19) The Impact of Writing on Engineering Culture
(13:39) How to Overcome Common Excuses for Not Writing
(16:32) Finding The First Blog Post Topic
(20:32) Tips on How to Start Writing
(22:19) The Importance of Goal and Perspective in Writing a Draft
(24:55) The Use of AI in Writing
(29:01) AI Prompts to Improve Your Writing
(30:14) The Best LLM Model for Writing
(31:53) The Best Workflow Working with AI
(33:41) Blog Post Pattern: Bug Hunt
(37:16) Blog Post Pattern: Thoughts on Trends
(40:13) The Importance of Promoting Our Writing
(42:47) How to Promote Your Writing Independently
(45:00) Future Opportunities of Writing
(47:55) Writing as a Developer
(49:02) 3 Tech Lead Wisdom
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Piotr Sarna’s Bio Piotr Sarna is a software engineer who is keen on open source projects and the Rust and C++ languages. He previously developed an open source distributed file system and had a brief adventure with the Linux kernel. He’s also a long-time contributor and maintainer of ScyllaDB, as well as libSQL and Turso. Piotr graduated from University of Warsaw with a Master’s degree in computer science.
Tech Lead Journal 