Milestone (Really): 100th Blog Post

December 14, 2010 by Christoff Truter Personal   This post is closed for comments.

I finally reached my 100th post today - by finally I really really mean finally.

This website's been running for about 5 years now, so I am not too sure if this is much of an achievement - especially seeing as some of my older posts resembles tweets more than posts.

Even though thats the case, I really do feel a sense of accomplishment, since this has been the first year I've been taking blogging seriously. (something every developer needs to take seriously)

This year I wrote majority of the posts you can find (at the moment at least) on this website (55 to be exact).

But why blog? Here is a list of my personal motivations.

1. Helping others
   
   I find it extremely fulfilling when I find a comment on my site in which one of the posts actually managed to help someone - time is afterall by far our most precious commodity.
   
   I feel we need to contribute as much as we can, freely give as you've received - just think about how many hours you've spent on the internet looking for answers to your questions - it needs to be a bi-directional action, don't be a parasite ;)
   
   
2. Being helped by others
   
   It can also be a wonderful learning tool (find better/other solutions), if you've got a teachable "spirit" that is and not live under the false assumption that you know and understand all things (oh we're not worthy).
   
   We can learn from anyone, I know criticism can be hard and we tend to be sensitive - especially if people get unnecessarily nasty, see it as something that you can use as part of your learning process. (perhaps change some of the misconceptions you might have - or potentially unfortunately improve on them - develop even greater misconceptions, hehehe)
   
   
3. Knowledge base
   
   Chances are pretty good that you're going to forget a lot of the things you've learned in 5 years (if not 5 minutes) from now - your blog can serve as a personal knowledge base, where you can store concepts and ideas in your own language and funky logic (wish i started sooner - sigh).
   
   
4. Market yourself
   
   It can also give potential employers an idea or approximation of who you are and what you can do, maybe even make your resume a little bit more colourful.
   
   Now I know it can be quite difficult to put yourself out there, its scary - I still find myself holding back on a lot of things (blogging wise) - since we're scared that people might think we're a special kind of stupid. (expose our ignorance to the whole world)
   
   But I can definitely recommended that if you don't have a blog, start one today - even if you only write tweet sized posts to start out with - go for it.

I've got an average of about 60 000 hits per month at this stage (nothing hectic) - excluding bots etc. So I just want to thank my loyal reader... uhm, loyal readers for visiting my website over the last few years, I hope to provide you with some quality posts in the years to come.