What makes a good programming blog post?

Question

I have a blog and the content so far is very subjective. If my blog was a question on stackoverflow it would have been closed months ago. ;)

What I want to do is write some simple tutorials or in depth examination of a programming topic or framework.

Of course I know what I like in a blog post but I wanted to ask the Stackie community what they think makes a good programming blog post.

Answer 1

Blogs are supposed to be subjective, IMNSHO. By all means do your tutorials and in-depth analyses, but don't be afraid to strongly color them with your personal opinions -- do you perchance think that Joel's blog, or Coding Horror, are coldy impersonal and objective?!-)

Answer 2

Something useful and hands-on. Like WCF RESTful POX, JSON and SOAP Coexist by codemeit. It could also be opinionated and insightful like Has Joel Spolsky Jumped the Shark? by Jeff Atwood.

Answer 3

Make me trust you.

Include personal experiences, especially failures, and provide a background so I can get to know you and follow your development.

Include different points of view - even just as 'further reading' links - so I can learn about the issues that are 'adjacent' to the issue you are discussing.

Finally, link to the relevant xkcd comic for each post :-p

Answer 4

Here are a few things I find useful:

• A blog that explains a development best practice (e.g. explaining TDD with good examples, explaining when and how to use a particular design pattern, etc.)
• A blog that explains how to use an advanced feature of a language that is not covered in basic documentation (e.g. RESTful WCF, XML parsing for iPhone, etc.)
• A blog that offers a comparison of related technologies (e.g. jQuery vs. Prototype, JBoss vs. Glassfish, etc.)

Answer 5

I find that detailed articles that explain how to solve common programming problems work for me. Anything lighthearted or funny may give you a spike in traffic but it will die off just as quick. Really useful articles will keep generating traffic for a long time.

Answer 6

A blog entry is what you make of it. Do you want it to make your site more popular? If so, you have two options.

1. Bring the content
   • Provide something that's needed but doesn't yet exist. My friend Jared Richardson explains that the most popular blog entry he's ever written was a one page practical walk-through of JUnit. He admits it wasn't insightful or novel, but it did fill a gap for a while. It's linked to by a lot of college classes and still surprises him that it draws the most traffic of all of his blog posts.
   • An insightful or novel idea will draw a good deal of traffic as well. But it's a lot harder to come up with a blog like that. And they tend to be very hit-or-miss.
   • A list or summary is a great format for a blog post. Summarize your learning and insights on a subject, or come up with a stack of tools/technologies that you've been experimenting with for a while.
2. Bring the drama
   • Take a stance on something controversial. A lot of people take this to the point of flaming, and there is a point where you can cross the line here. But these kinds of entries will produce a lot of traffic. Consider your reputation, please. :)

I tend to take the "sanity hacking" approach to blogging. It can be a great way to focus your thoughts on a subject. If those turn out to be subjective, so be it. I don't think that's what defines a blog post as good or bad. Many popular posts that a lot of people have read will fade away into obscurity over time, but those that help you (and possibly a few others) formulate a sound, reasoned opinion will stand the test of time. I'm more partial to calling these types of posts "good". Popularity and quality are not synonymous.

Answer 7

Make it open source.

I really like a blog I can copy code snippits from and then adapt for my own use. For example, I recently wrote a few blog posts on apache and PHP, and I included complete code segments so that others can make use of my experiences.

You also need to keep your audience in mind. Is your readership highly technical, requiring less basic explanation but a lot of meat and potatoes, or are they novices or beginners, requiring a lot more hand-holding? You can certainly do both on the same blog, just keep that in mind while you're writing an article.

Following from that, make sure your readers don't have (any/too many) unanswered questions at the end of your article. You want them to say "Aah! That's how it works!" instead of "I still don't get it". Again, keep your readership in mind; if you're writing an article on advanced python, beginners still won't get it, but the article's not destined for them, anyway. Tagging or categorizing articles based on skill might be a very good idea.

You might want to have a look at some of the comments in the PHP documentation: identify which comments add a lot of value and which don't.