I have been meaning to create a blog and write things ages ago. But I was afraid to actually post something, because we now live in a time that it is easy to be criticized (the bad type), trolled and hated.

I even posted in HN to ask about this. It did not received that much attention but some people still gave me great tips and advice.

Here are some excerpts from the comments:

This sort of fear is very normal, and is what stops a lot of people from giving a lot of value back to the world by writing about their area of expertise. If you overcome it, you’ll help not only yourself but also lots of other people. – thenomad

Everybody makes mistakes, including bloggers. From my experience, if something is wrong or doesn’t work your readers will let you know in the comments. Just be humble and ready to correct your mistakes and there should be no issues. – jetti

The thing is, everyone who writes on the internet has been wrong. Everyone. You aren’t going to be this horrible exception, the one person who said one thing wrong on an otherwise-perfect internet. So go ahead. Write. Make mistakes. – AnimalMuppet

These comments ring true to me, even smart people make mistakes. The intention to share and impart knowledge is the one that should matter. Even making a mistake and being corrected by others is an opportunity to learn and meet someone new.

So what now?

As of this writing it is the middle of 2018, more than a year has passed since I asked the question in HN. The time of being afraid is done. This is the time that I will push myself out of the comfort zone and start writing.

I am inspired by blogs of awesome people like Armin Ronacher, Kenneth Reitz, Jeff Atwood, Martin Fowler and many more. Their works and writings greatly helped me be a better engineer and maybe someday I can do the same to other people like them.

I used Jekyll, a static site generator in creating this blog to avoid managing a cloud server and database. My blog’s theme is a modifed version of end2end.

Hopefully I can continue this endeavor to contribute to this open and free well of knowledge, no matter how small it can be. Maybe one day someone will stumble upon one of my posts and help them solve their problems.

I hope that this will also help other people to start writing and blogging about the things they want to share and are afraid to do so. Until next time.