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lastmod 2025-03-31created 2025-02-113 edits

A blog (English: blog or weblog) is a type of website on the World Wide Web that collects and publishes posts written to share information or exchange opinions.

The word blog is a blend of web and log (record), and it takes the form of writing down and posting, one after another like a diary, one's own feelings, long-held thoughts, and views or claims one wants to make known. Other people can see and read these, and usually the most recent posts are shown first in chronological order. However, on blogs where the posting time can be edited, the order of posts can be changed by modifying the time. Unlike a bulletin board system (BBS) where many people can write, only one person or a small number of people can post. The person who owns and manages a blog is called a blogger. A user who copies content authored by others without permission and posts it on their own blog is called a splogger.

A blog is personal in nature, but since it can sometimes exert power through the internet comparable to any existing large media outlet, it is called a 'one-person media'. The designated refined Korean term is nurisarangbang (roughly "online guest room"), and its shortened form based on this is nusa.

How to write blog posts that developers read

  • A practical guide on how to write blog posts that developers actually read and share
  • Based on 9 years of software blogging experience and millions of views, the author analyzes the difference between successful and failed posts
  • Shares the common traits and strategies of posts that get attention in developer communities such as Hacker News, Reddit, and Lobsters

Why you can trust the author

  • The author has run a personal development blog for 9 years, with 300,000–500,000 readers visiting per year
  • Appeared on the Hacker News front page more than 30 times, many of them reaching #1
  • Successfully launched an indie business with a single blog post
  • Consistently mentioned on Reddit, Lobsters, and elsewhere
  • Rated the 48th most popular personal blog on Hacker News

Get to the point quickly

  • Many developer bloggers don't get straight to the point at the start of a post, causing readers to leave
  • When readers start reading a post, they expect answers to two questions:
    • Is this post for someone like me?
    • What benefit do I get from reading this post?
  • These two questions must be answered within the title and the first 3 sentences
  • Use topics and terms that readers will care about, and avoid excessive jargon or background explanation
  • The benefit a post provides can be:
    • Techniques that can be applied immediately in daily life or work
    • Easy-to-understand explanations of concepts
    • Insights into technology or industry
    • Relatable, interesting stories
  • Example: “if got, want: A Simple Way to Write Better Go Tests”
    • The title and first sentence alone make the following clear:
      • Target readers: Go language users
      • Benefit: learn a new way to write tests in 30 seconds

How to broaden your target audience

  • Most bloggers write for a specific small group of developers (e.g., intermediate-to-advanced Java developers)
  • With small changes in wording, you can reach a wider range of readers (e.g., all Java developers → all developers → anyone interested in technology)
  • Slightly adjusting terms and explanations so that readers without background knowledge can understand increases reach tenfold
  • However, broadening too generically can reduce the depth or expertise of the post
  • Example: “How I Stole Your Siacoin”
    • Originally a post aimed at a specific cryptocurrency community,
    • Revised by generalizing terms and explanations so that even people unfamiliar with cryptocurrency could understand
    • As a result, it became a popular post in various communities such as Reddit and Hacker News

Plan a path to reach readers

  • Even a well-written post is useless if people don't read it
  • Avoid topics that are hard to rank highly in Google search
  • You need a realistic plan for sharing in communities (e.g., Reddit, Hacker News)
  • Reddit often disallows external links or has strict rules
  • Hacker News is often cold toward tutorials or overly common topics
  • Even if you share on social media, the effect is minimal unless you have many followers
  • You need to design a realistic path
    • Before choosing a topic, first consider the path by which the post can reach readers
    • Consider the following questions:
      • Is the topic easy to find through Google search?
      • Is it a topic that already has hundreds of posts?
      • What keywords will the target readers search for?
      • Is there a community where you can share the link? Is that community active?
  • Example: “Using Zig to Unit Test a C Application”
    • The Zig language is a new technology with almost no competing posts, so it succeeded in ranking high in search
    • The link could be shared on Hacker News, Lobsters, Reddit (/r/Zig), Ziggit, and others
    • As a result, it became a top popular post on every channel

Show more visual elements

  • The most effective change in a blog post is adding images
  • Posts with only long text are less readable
  • It is good to insert images, screenshots, graphs, etc. in cases like the following:
    • Explaining a GUI program → screenshot
    • Explaining changes in numbers → graph
    • Explaining an incident such as a server error → dashboard capture
    • Explaining a complex concept → schematic, diagram
  • For simple drawings, free tools such as Excalidraw can be used
  • Hiring an illustrator is also a good option (about $50–100 per illustration)
  • Sometimes simple drawings like MS Paint are more effective than AI images

Designing structure for skimming readers

  • Many readers don't read a post from the beginning but skim through it to judge
  • To draw interest through skimming alone, the following elements are important:
    • Clear and interesting headings
    • Appropriate images and visual cues
    • Avoid long paragraphs made up only of text
  • Tool: checking the post from a skimmer's point of view
    • A bookmarklet can be used to show only the headings and images in a post
    • This lets you check the structure that skimming readers see
  • Example: a post with a boring structure vs. an interesting one
    • “End-to-End Testing Web Apps: The Painless Way” → failed because its headings and images were not appealing
    • “I Regret My $46k Website Redesign” → succeeded because its visual structure drew interest (read by 150,000 people in the first week)

See also

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