Hi lovely readers,
If you’ve ever thought about starting a blog but stopped because “no one reads blogs anymore,” you’re not alone. With AI changing how people consume content, it’s easy to assume blogging has lost its value. I started blogging in 2021, and since then I’ve published 45 posts, with my most read one reaching 40 thousand views. That experience has shown me that blogging is still incredibly important and worth pursuing today. Here’s why.
For yourself
We only save a limited amount of information every day in our heads. In my case, that limit is very noticeable. My brain often feels like a strainer. All my loved ones know that if they want me to remember something, they need to write it down for me. Telling me while I am doing something else guarantees I will forget it within minutes.
I sometimes get the opportunity to talk to some of the smartest people in the tech field. People who know far more about the subject than I ever will, and that is completely fine. What frustrates me is when someone explains something clearly, and five minutes later I realize I have already forgotten most of it.
That is where writing things down becomes important. Whether it is a reminder, a to do list, or a personal knowledge base, writing forces you to slow down and think about what you just learned. Instead of just listening and moving on, you actively process the information.
Writing things down also helps with memory. When you put something into your own words, your brain has to revisit the concept instead of letting it fade away. Writing on paper is generally better for remembering the concept, but writing a blog post is a great alternative. You can even start on paper and later turn it into a digital blog post.
Over time, your blog becomes a manual for your future self. You will forget things, especially technical details. Having blog posts that you wrote yourself means you always have an explanation that already made sense to you once. Often these posts include examples, demos, or code snippets that you can reuse or quickly understand again.
Another benefit is language development, especially if English is not your first language. My native language is Dutch, and during university my teachers often pointed out how I would lose my train of thought halfway through a sentence. Writing technical blog posts in a non-native language takes time and effort, but that effort adds up. I now notice awkward sentences much faster and make far fewer grammar mistakes than I did in 2021. That improvement also carries over into my work life, where clear written communication through Slack, Teams, or email is essential in an international environment.
For others
If you learn something interesting or feel genuinely excited about a topic, sharing it can help others while trying to understand it or practicing it yourself.
When I started blogging, I was still in university. By spending a lot of time on Twitter, I slowly realized that going to university is not something everyone has access to. In many countries, studying is extremely expensive. Others choose not to pursue it because of family responsibilities or personal circumstances. Meanwhile, I was 22, living in a country where university cost around 2500 euros a year, and I was learning a lot of genuinely interesting things.
That realization became a big motivator for me. Besides all the personal benefits blogging gave me, it felt good to share knowledge that I had easy access to. I would go to class, take notes on my laptop or on paper, put everything into Notion, and then turn those notes into a blog post or sometimes a short series of tweets if I felt it could be useful to others.
I still do this today. I learn from public speakers at conferences, from colleagues, and even from students I teach who are deeply interested in topics I know very little about. Someone mentions a concept or explains something new to me, and I write it down so I can explore it further later.
Some of those notes stay in Notion forever. Others turn into blog posts. Either way, writing and sharing creates a way to pass knowledge forward. AI is not always reliable for this yet. A concept might be too new for it to know about, it might hallucinate features or solutions, or it might explain something in a way that simply does not click for people. That is where you can make a real difference.
For your career
Blogging also plays a role in your career, even if that is not the reason you started in the first place.
When you write blog posts, you are not just sharing knowledge. You are showing how you think. You show how you break down problems, how you explain concepts, and what you find important enough to spend time on. That is very different from listing skills on a CV or LinkedIn profile.
A blog gives context to your experience. It shows what you actually do with the tools and technologies you work with. Someone reading your post can see how deep you go, how you approach learning something new, and how you communicate technical ideas.
Another important part is visibility. Your work normally stays within your team or your company. A blog moves that work into the open. People outside your immediate circle can find it, learn from it, and form an opinion of you long before you ever speak to them.
This can lead to opportunities you did not actively chase. Conversations start more easily when someone already knows what you’re interested in and what you know. Sometimes people reach out because a post helped them. Sometimes it becomes a reference point during an interview or a collaboration. None of this is guaranteed, but it is something you would not have without blogging.
For me, blogging never felt like a career strategy. It felt like documenting what I was learning. Over time, it simply became part of how I work and how I grow. And that visibility is something that helps just as much as the knowledge itself.
Your keystrokes are precious
Once you start working in a team and someone asks you to explain something over text, you usually have two options. One is writing a long Teams or Slack message that only one or two people will ever read. The other is writing a blog post so that many people can benefit from the same amount of effort.
At that point, it is worth asking yourself whether those keystrokes are really worth your time and energy.
I first learned about this idea in 2024 when Scott Hanselman spoke at a meetup near me. He mentioned his website keysleft.com and his blog post Do they deserve the gift of your keystrokes. One quote from that post really stuck with me:
If you email someone one on one, you are reaching that one person.
If you blog about it, or update a wiki or something similar, your keystrokes travel farther and reach more people.
You only have so many hours in the day.
That idea is absolutely true. Why put the same amount of effort into a one to one message when you can help more people with that same effort. Writing a blog post forces you to think more clearly about the concept, allows you to reuse it later, and gives future colleagues or random people on the internet something useful to learn from.
I do this for students as well. In their first year, my students have to learn PyGame and Python Flask. Instead of explaining the same concepts from scratch every year, I wrote blog posts like How to Build Your First Python Game: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Simple Shooter with PyGame and Build a To-Do List App Using Python Flask, Jinja2, and SQL. They also struggled with topics like SSH keys and Git Tags, so I wrote blog posts on those as well. All of these blog posts are public. I need to explain these concepts every year anyway, so it makes sense to put them online where they can help more than just one group of students.
The work stays the same. The reach does not.
That’s a wrap!
Blogging does not have to be about algorithms, monetization, or chasing numbers. At its core, it is about learning, documenting, and sharing in a way that works for you. It helps you remember what you learn, makes knowledge more accessible for others, and allows your effort to reach further than a single message or conversation ever could.
You do not need a big audience to start. You do not need a perfect writing style or a niche figured out from day one. What matters is that you write things down, in your own words, and put them somewhere you can come back to later. Everything else grows from there.
If you have been on the fence about starting a blog, I hope this gave you a different perspective. And if you already have one, maybe this is your sign to keep going.
If you have thoughts, questions, or experiences you would like to share, feel free to leave a comment under this post or reach out to me on my socials. I am always happy to talk about blogging, learning in public, and all things tech.
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