Become a Better Engineer Through Writing

@kristinathaikristina.io
Kristina Thai, iOS software engineer
Become a Better Engineer 
Through Writing

Hi, I’m Kristina Thai !
📱 🌶⌚

What makes a good engineer?

Engineer Checklist*
01
02
03
04
“Soft” skills
Communicates well
Passion for learning
Learns from mistakes
Teacher/mentor
* not a comprehensive list
01
02
03
Technical Skills
Strong coder
Domain expert
Problem solver

What does this have
to do with writing?

Code and essays have a lot more in common.
The product is a sequence of logical statements,
bundled into modular units – whether it be
functions or paragraphs.
Like good prose, good code is concise.
Bad code wastes CPU cycles; bad essays waste
brain cycles.

“
http://www.shubhro.com/2014/12/27/software-engineers-should-write/
-Shubhro Saha

4 writing channels that
help engineers

📓 Personal Journal
❓ Question & Answer Forums
📖 Blogging
📝 Technical Tutorials

01
Personal Journal
✦ private place to record your technical challenges
📓

Personal Journal📓
Benefits
✦ Reflection time
✦ For your eyes only
✦ Easy to get started
Challenges
✦ Hard to keep up
✦ Doesn’t benefit anyone  
else
✦ No one to correct you if 
you’re wrong
Engineer Checklist
Coding skills
Domain expert
Problem solver
Communicates well
Learn from mistakes

02
Developer Q&A Forums
✦ places to get help with your technical problems
✦ knowledgable experts answer questions
❓

Beneﬁts
✦ Learn what others are 
struggling with
✦ Easy to pick up 
whenever you want
✦ Bite-sized chunks
✦ Builds reputation
Challenges
✦ Negative comments
✦ Overt hostility
❓
Engineer Checklist
Coding skillsDomain expertProblem solverCommunicates wellTeacher/mentor

03
Blogging
✦ public place to record your technical challenges
📖

http://swift.ayaka.me/

http://nshipster.com/

http://techblog.netﬂix.com/

Blogging
Beneﬁts
✦ Public exposure
✦ Build reputation
✦ Reﬂection time
Challenges
✦ Lots of time &  
commitment
✦ Keeping your blog fresh 
& unique
📖 Engineer Checklist
Coding skills
Domain expert
Problem solver
Communicates well
Learn from mistakes 
Teacher/mentor

04
Technical Tutorials
✦ step-by-step technical walkthroughs that teach others  
how to do something
✦ usually has a working demo project
📝

https://www.natashatherobot.com

https://www.raywenderlich.com/

Technical Tutorials
Beneﬁts
✦ Best to build reputation
✦ Reinforces learning
✦ Build full projects
Challenges
✦ Even MORE time  
& commitment
✦ Find unique & undiscovered 
solutions
📝 Engineer Check
Coding skills
Domain expert
Problem solver
Communicates well
Learn from mistakes Teacher/mentor

❓❓❓
🙎
That’s a lot!

My Journey

Newsletters

As of Oct 4, 2015
Website Stats

Realm Blog Contribution

Invites to Speak

Getting Started

Engineer Checklist
01
02
03
04
“Soft” skills
Communicates well
Learns from mistakes
Teacher/mentor
01
02
03
Technical Skills
Strong coder
Domain expert
Problem solver

Personal Journal
Easiest way - create a private online one
✦ Creating a private Tumblr
✦ Adjust privacy settings on wordpress.com
Ofﬂine Journals/Other writing platforms
✦ Day One app
✦ Evernote
✦ Atom/Sublime Text

Number 1 thing to keep in mind - community rules and
communication styles on these forums
Getting started with Stack Overﬂow
Getting started on Quora

Blogging
Blogging platforms - hosted
Getting started with Medium
Github pages + Jekyll
Ghost.org
Blogging platforms - self-hosted
WordPress.org
SyntaxHighlighter plugin
Wordfence Security plugin

Blogging
Blogging process
1. Decide on a topic
2. Lay the foundation/describe the context
3. Highlight various approaches
4. End with most optimal solution
✦ Or a question if you haven’t ﬁgured it out yourself

Blogging
Motivation
Most people give up too early

Blogging
Motivation
The insanely slow road to building a blog (and why most people give it up)

Blogging
Motivation
✦ How do I keep up with it all: blogging, online life &
more
✦ 5 ways to keep your blog content fresh
✦ How do I start a blog and keep it up? - Quora
✦ You should write blogs
✦ Software engineers should write

Technical Tutorials
Tutorial creation process
1. Decide on a topic
✦ Doesn’t have to be all encompassing
✦ Determine your audience
✦ Latest questions on Stack Overﬂow
2. Create working project/write working code samples

Technical Tutorials
3. Create step-by-step tutorial based on project/code
samples
✦ Resource: how to write a programming tutorial
✦ My ﬁrst tutorial
✦ Screenshots & copy and paste code snippets
✦ Starter code project

Technical Tutorials
4. Upload sample project to GitHub
5. Upload tutorial to website
6. Advertise on Twitter/other social media
✦ #iOSdev #swiftlang #watchOS
✦ Newsletter accounts & inﬂuential people
✦ Post to answer a Stack Overﬂow question

Tips for getting started
🎓
💻
👭
Don’t have to be THE expert
Check out your side projects
Find a blogging buddy

kristina.io/writing

Thanks!
me@kristina.io

Become a Better Engineer Through Writing

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