Sunday, January 25, 2015

CSC148 January 25th 2015: Why Geeks Should Write

Why should geeks write?  The answer to that question varies depending on what kind of a geek you are, but if you happen to be interested in computer science, then this blog is for you.  I started writing this blog at the beginning of September 2014, for my first year computer science course CSC165.  At first, i thought being asked to keep a blog is a simple way for the professors and instructors to see whether or not we are taking our course seriously, as well as to add some additional homework to the sparse amount of work that we have.  However as the semester progressed, i realized that i've begun to use this blog as a way to review the materials that i have learned in the previous week, as well as evaluate my understanding and figure out what topics i still need to study.  Writing the weekly blog has allowed me to remind myself of topics that i need to study further, or to ruminate over problems that i have not yet been able to solve.  To me, i am writing so that i can organize the knowledge that i have gained from my classes, as well as to make sure that i do not become lazy and skip over topics that i can only vaguely understand.  However, this is only one reason for writing.

Being a geek means to be obsessively enthusiastic about topics of interest, and through this enthusiasm, many self discoveries and learning will occur.  As a beginner coder, i have no yet worked on any really useful programs, however from reading the blogs of other programmers, i have learned that keeping a debugging journal is in many ways similar to how ive kept a blog to reflect upon my studies.  Mark Dalrymple, a software developer mentioned in his blog that by keeping a log of bugs that he has found in his code, even if they seem insignificant at the moment, can be the key to debugging errors in the future.

Although writing has many benefits to the writer in the form of reflection and evaluation, but if made public, the contents of these blogs can also share many wonderful problem solving techniques to people all over the web.  Developing further on this notion, one can even write with the sole purpose of guiding or instructing others on how to do certain things.  I know that most of the time when i encounter software issues, such as when programs crash, i often rely on googling for solutions provided by other people.

In conclusion, writing is a wonderful way of communicating both with youself as well as with others, and geeks should keep on writing so that more and more ideas can be shared across the web.

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