How I wrote my first Medium post as a Programmer
I used to think if I can program, I can do anything until I thought about writing a post on Medium. I took a pen and paper to write a draft and my mind went blank. In software development we always know what we have to do. We just have to figure out how to do it. I didn’t even know how to write it or let alone what to write about. So I decided to give it a go, the way I write programs.
Step 1 — Shortlist topics
After thinking about lots of topics like sports, finance, health I realized I am not an expert in either of these and would perhaps take few days to research about any one of them. I thought about writing whatever I am trying to achieve which is ‘Writing a Medium post’.
Step 2 — Find a good IDE
I stared at pen and paper for few minutes straight with my blank mind and then decided to write in VSCode because that is what I use for coding. Writing is not unlike programming. Only less curly braces and more full stops.
Step 3 — Google it.
I typed “How to write article” and google spat some useful links on my face. For any coding problem I encounter I look at Stackoverflow but it’s of no use here. While looking through links I stumbled upon this post on wikiHow which reminded me that I should divide the post in small chunks.
I divided my article in to 3 sections.
1. Header (Introduction)
2. Body (Main content)
3. Footer (Conclusion)
In software engineering it is recommended to keep code concise so that others can comprehend it easily.
Step 4 — Refactor
Ernest Hemingway once said
“The first draft of anything is shit.”
First draft of anything is unoptimized. It needs to be re-evaluated multiple times to make it better.
Step 5 — Unit testing (proof read)
I installed spell checker extension in VScode to look out for syntax errors.
Step 6 — Deploy
Just like any application needs to be deployed to production so is this post and Medium is like a hosting provider that enables people to see the world from your perspective.
Conclusion
Writing a post is just like coding your favorite application. You need to have patience, creativity and you must be willing to share your thoughts with the world.
