Why I Finally Started Writing Online
I have kept physical notebooks for years. Here is what pushed me to start publishing my thoughts online, and why I think every developer should too.
my pocket notebook where it all started 📓The Notebooks
I have been keeping physical notebooks since 2018. Small pocket-sized ones that I carry everywhere. When I run into a tricky bug, I sketch it out on paper. When I learn something new — a pattern, a concept, a gotcha — I write it down by hand.
There is something about the act of writing by hand that forces you to slow down and actually understand what you are putting on the page. You cannot paste a Stack Overflow answer into a notebook. You have to distil it into your own words.
Over the years I have filled more notebooks than I can count. Ideas for projects, architecture diagrams, notes from conference talks, half-finished essays about things I was thinking about.
The problem? Once it was in a notebook it was essentially gone. I could find it again if I remembered roughly when I wrote it, but sharing it with anyone — or even searching it — was impossible.
The Moment I Changed My Mind
I was working on the Boneappetitedk project, trying to figure out why PrimeVue's design tokens were not being applied in the right order during SSR hydration. I spent the better part of a day on it, eventually solved it, and wrote three pages of notes about what I found.
Six months later a friend asked me about a similar issue with a different UI library. I remembered solving something like it. I dug out the notebook, found the entry, and read it back to him over a voice call — squinting at my own handwriting.
That was the moment I thought: this should be online.
Not because the internet needed another developer blog. But because future-me and the people I work with would benefit from being able to search it, link to it, share it.
What Stopped Me (Honestly)
Perfectionism, mostly. I kept thinking I needed to write long, well-researched, authoritative posts. The kind that get shared on Hacker News. The kind with benchmarks and citations.
That bar is impossibly high if you are also trying to hold down a job, work on side projects, and occasionally touch grass.
What changed my perspective was reading that the most useful content online is usually not the polished technical deep-dive — it is the "I just figured this out and here is what I found" note. The kind of thing you write ten minutes after solving a problem, while the details are still vivid.
That is exactly what my notebooks contain.
How I Plan to Write Here
Short. Honest. Close to the original notebook entry in spirit.
I am not trying to build an audience or a brand. I am trying to create a searchable, shareable version of the notebooks I have already been keeping.
Posts will mostly be:
- Things I learned while building something
- Opinions I formed over time that I want to articulate properly
- Notes on tools, patterns, or decisions I keep revisiting
I will not be posting on a schedule. I will post when something is worth writing down — which, based on the notebooks, is more often than I realise.
If something I write here saves you an afternoon of debugging, or makes you think about a problem differently, that is more than enough reason for it to exist.