A re-introduction to the blog

A re-introduction to the blog

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3 min read

This past Monday, Hashnode announced a writing competition. I have decided to use that as an incentive to get back on the technical writing horse. After trying (and failing) a couple of times, the hope is that the momentum sustained from this can be what I need to create a steady and sustainable habit going forward.

So, this space will be dedicated (at least for the near future) to mobile development, with React Native as the focus. I have always had the picture of having a page for developers looking to learn React Native.

I also want to help said theoretical developer from their entry point and see value in this space all through their software journey as it relates to React Native. It seems a daunting enough task and surely won’t be accomplished in any short span of time (or ever.) But the sheer size of a task at hand does not mean one should not have a go at said task. After all, what would humanity be if we did not attempt the “impossible” things?

I saw this video from Samina(see accompanying blog post below), another blogger here. She spoke generally on getting your blog domain to act as a portfolio. I liked the whole article in general, and like the idea of using various pages on this blog with an option to get a custom domain in particular. That of course will be dependent on how well I can structure this going forward. As for the other sections though, I have / will include the following:

  • Resources: The internet is full of articles on a wide range of subjects for the React Native developer and a good number of them are well written too. Rather than repeat the same thing ad nauseam, I figured those will be on this page and serve as a reference to any one that requires the help. It is also a good shelf for articles I do come back to look at from time to time. And as I said, rather than go through many articles that one sees when searching online, you can see one that's vetted to be better in quality (at least by my judgment).

  • Code snippets: There is a pretty common tool called Carbon used to create colorful code snippets. I see them all the time on social media. I figured I could create a wall with these short snippets showing how to implement a feature, abstracting a bug, or show showing better code practices.

  • TIL(Today I Learned): This is an extension of a practice I’ve done for a long time now, which was something I picked up from a blogger (can't find the link right now) sometime last year. The idea is to document whenever you encounter something new about coding in that particular language, with notes below the code snippets if needed. I will be using Carbon to make snippets of such use cases as found and will display them on that page.

We can add more sections as time goes on.

One final tweak I would like to make is to show references only at the end of articles. These are usually hyperlinked in the blog. It creates a bad habit for me where I open many tabs in the browser, while looking for a quick solution. This helps me to view these as optional or for later viewing. I hope this can help another as well too.

This is how I intend to use this space in the interwebs for from now onwards. I do hope any that views information on this section of the internet finds it helpful. As always, contributions and corrections are very much welcome.

All this to say, welcome to my corner of the web.

Cheers.

  1. Samina's blog post