Not for work, not for promoting your new project. People that write informational blog posts about their opnions on things, or projects they did with no monetary pursuit.. why?<p>I mean it's a lot of work. And broadly speaking, you're more likely to get negative feedback than positive. And more often than either of those, you'll be ignored entirely.<p>What's your motivation to set aside 3-300 hours writing something up?
Related:<p><i>Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?</i><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42685534">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42685534</a><p><i>Why I still blog after 15 years</i><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41646531">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41646531</a><p><i>Advice for a friend who wants to start a blog</i><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42872276">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42872276</a>
I don't keep a public blog anymore because of AI scrapers, but when I did, I did it because I enjoy writing essays and sharing knowledge, and I enjoy even more when people read and find them and find them valuable. The same is true for a lot of the software and other projects I do.<p>It's like any other hobby. You do it because you get value out of doing it. Making money is irrelevant. Actually, I take that back... making money would reduce the value of doing it because as soon as your goal is to make money, you're immediately constrained in terms of what you can do and how you can do it.
<i>or projects they did with no monetary pursuit.. why?</i><p>I like to share what I've worked on. For example, this is something I did with no monetary gain and it wasn't work but I think it was cool and was worthwhile: <a href="https://blog.jgc.org/2024/09/cracking-old-zip-file-to-help-open.html" rel="nofollow">https://blog.jgc.org/2024/09/cracking-old-zip-file-to-help-o...</a>
Combination of giving back and trying to give insight into myself as an engineer.<p>On giving back - Throughout my career I've read tons of blog posts that have given me the information I needed to get started or un-stuck on a task. I hope when I write about things that someone out there may wonder 'how do I X?' and my blog post shows up when googling.<p>On giving insight into myself - I've had people reach out while I was doing a job search that said they looked over my blog posts and that gave them a positive signal which led them to reach out to me for a position.