Writing effective coding tutorials

18 Jul 2022

Writing about what you learn, when done well, is a great way to solidify your own knowledge of a topic, stretch yourself professionally, and establish credibility in your field.

In 2020, I started writing tutorial-style articles for Ruby on Rails developers. Writing these articles began as a fun distraction from a stressful job, and as a way to reconnect with web development as a discipline as my day job pulled me further away from regularly writing code. From that beginning as a distracting hobby, I grew to have a passion for writing tutorials as a way to share my knowledge with internet strangers.

Over the last 18 months, my writing has helped me grow my professional network, find new consulting clients, earn a few thousand dollars in (self-published) book sales, and to feel much more confident in my technical skills.

As I’ve worked to improve my own writing, I have read many, many articles from other developers. Many of those articles have been valuable but I also see very common, correctable mistakes from folks who have knowledge to share but struggle with sharing that knowledge effectively.

Today, I’m sharing some of the most common mistakes I see tutorial writers make and how to correct those mistakes to write more effective tutorials. I will also share the simple formula I use when writing new tutorials.

Read the rest 13-minute read

Hotwiring Rails Newsletter - April 2022

04 Apr 2022

This newsletter went out via email to the Hotwiring Rails subscriber list, but I know that not everyone wants another email cluttering up their inbox. For those folks, I’ll always publish the full content of the newletter here too, so you can get all the content with none of the emails.

Thoughts or feedback on how I can make this newsletter more valuable? Have something you’d like to include in next month’s edition? Send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

Read the rest Three-minute read

Lessons learned from publishing on Gumroad

24 Mar 2022

(This post was originally published on Indie Hackers, but I thought some of my regular blog readers might find it interesting, so I’m publishing it here, with light edits.)

One month ago I published my first ebook on Gumroad. I went into the process with absolutely no idea what I was doing, and no real idea of what to expect. I wanted to see if I could write and sell a book, so I struck out with that goal in mind and winged it all the way to the finish line.

Now that I am through the writing and publishing process, I thought others who are considering writing an ebook (especially a technical book like mine), might find value in hearing about my process along with what went well and what could have gone better.

Read the rest 10-minute read