Explain it to your rubber duck

I do not have a rubber duck, but a rubber sumo. He always listens to me calmly whenever I am trying to figure something out and let's me squeeze his fluffiness between my hands when I get on my nerves.

My rubber sumo is primarily my debugging tool and so is my blog. When I started to learn about coding, I read that many developers recommend writing a blog as a way to explain and understand concepts. And I couldn't agree more!

Why do I encourage you to start a blog?

Train your brain and improve your skills

By collecting your notes and thoughts, you will realize the lack in your knowledge. Review, summarize, explore and research what you don't understand yet. This process will stick all concepts in your brain.

You're not growing
if you are not challenged

Become a teacher

When you have learnt something and share it, you will be helping someone out there for sure. There are great coding communities, where you can contribute. It doesn't really matter if there are already hundreds of posts about the same topic. Anyone has a unique perspective and way of explaining things, which might be clearer or easier to understand for some people. It is a win-win process (you learn from others, you improve your skills and you also give something back to the community).

Show your knowledge & expertise and… get hired!

You will not only be showing that you are interested and passionate about coding, but also that you have quite some knowledge and good communication skills. Furthermore, you could become an expert in a specific topic, could benefit when changing jobs or grow your career.

Make a list of the concepts you are learning. You will always find a topic that you can go deeper into.
Read coding books.
Check coding communities like hashnode, DEV, codenewbie or medium. These are also free blogging platforms where you could start writing.
Let yourself inspire by other devs in Twitter or Linkedin.
Listen to podcasts.
Build projects and share your learnings.

Are you ready?