I've finally decided to start this project after a recent Twitter conversation about the difficulties of fluently talking about development. Writing is hard - even now I've rewritten this line a half dozen times and I still don't like it very much.
Writing code, as with most forms of writing, is a very strange undertaking if you take a step back and think about it - you sit in one place for hours on end talking to yourself and recording bits and pieces on paper or a keyboard (imagine coming across someone on a street corner staring intently ahead and occasionally mumbling to themselves; weird, right?). While working, you construct a complex representation of your codebase in your mind and flit from place to place, grabbing some data here and writing a function there. Take a second to appreciate how incredible that is...
Writing is difficult because making choices is difficult (if you're anywhere near as indecisive as me, at least). Every sentence, every word requires you to select from the 171,476 or so words you know. Every function, no matter how simple, can be written in a few dozen slightly different ways, and to write code effeciently requires that you make these decisions on the fly. As a result, it's often difficult to remember your exact rationale when looking back, especially when you're put on the spot.
Just write.
The only way to improve is to practice. In the words of the great @MIDImyers (and I'm paraphrasing), "just write." If you really want to get better at communicating your thoughts and rationale when coding, you've just got to do it. Hence, this project - I may be a bit shit at writing, but I know I can improve by just... writing. I'll be writing a new post once a day, every day, for the next year. I plan to cover a wide range of topics, languages, and frameworks - sometimes I'll just chat about a problem I faced that day, sometimes I'll put a bit more effort in on a deep dive into a particular implementation, sometimes I'll just complain (constructively, of course). But the important part is I will write something every day.
I'm looking forward to the journey.
PS: I'm also going to try to include at least one block of code with each post, so here ya go:
function sayHello() {
console.log('Hello, world!');
}