This is going to be a more personal post, exposing my entire personal branding strategy, or rather, the complete lack of one. ๐ If you're only here for technical content, feel free to keep scrolling. Maybe I'll write something technical later this week. I have no idea how many people will read this one โ maybe five โ but that's kind of the point!
I'm writing this post because it's just been a year since I started publishing here. My beautiful badge:
It has been a truly crazy year, during which I've had the enormous pleasure of earning your trust, and somehow ending it with stats like these. Thank you! โค๏ธ
@francistrdev suggested under one of his posts that I should tell the story of how I ended up on DEV. But I decided that deserved a separate post, preferably an anniversary one, because the story is definitely not the usual one. You see, I started a blog because I wanted... something to put on my "About Me" slide at a conference. ๐
But let's start from the beginning.
It Didn't Exactly Start at the Best Time
In the summer of 2025, I wasn't in a particularly good place mentally. The previous year had brought several very negative events in my personal life, which I don't want to write about publicly (but seriously, objectively speaking, things were pretty bad).
And then, as the final blow, I had to give up my beloved judo because of an injury. Not my first one, either, so this really felt like the final nail in the coffin. I'd only trained for two years, but I went three times a week. I had my routine and friends there.
For most of that summer, I was just somehow drifting through life. I wasn't depressed, but I was constantly stuck thinking about all the bad things that had happened.
After many weeks, I finally decided that I had to somehow get myself out of that loop and start trying new things. A party, a workshop, a local event. Anything.
And it turned out that it worked! Obviously not overnight, but every new activity and every new idea helped me take another small step out of the darkness and toward the light.
And Then There Was JS Poland
One day, while scrolling through LinkedIn, I came across a post from a friend of mine who travels around Poland giving talks at meetups. And it suddenly reminded me that I'd once dreamed of speaking at JS Poland.
I figured their CFP was probably open. It was, indeed. I submitted exactly one topic.
Now, JS Poland is a serious conference with some world-class speakers, so I estimated my chances as... rather tiny. But I'd submitted something! A few more dopamine points unlocked. I was very proud of myself.
Some time later, conference organizer, Darek, contacted me and asked whether I happened to have recordings of any of my previous talks. As luck would have it, I had exactly one, from six years earlier. I sent it over and assumed I'd probably get a yes/no answer sometime the following week.
He called me back half an hour later. (The talk was 20 minutes long.) He said the presentation was "excellent" and invited me to the conference. OH, WHAT A DOPAMINE HIT THAT WAS!!! I felt amazing.
In the meantime, another tragedy happened very close to me, but because something was happening in my life, because there was movement and something to look forward to, I didn't completely fall apart.
So... Maybe I Should Start a Blog?
After a few weeks, however, the dopamine started wearing off, and it was still too early to start working seriously on the conference presentation. I have no idea why, but at some point I thought: Maybe I could start a blog? Then I'd have something to link on my "About Me" slide, so it would look like I was doing something in the community. ๐คฃ
I didn't feel like building my own blog, though, so I decided to use an existing blogging platform. I chose DEV because I'd always liked... the layout. ๐ Also, the articles I came across on DEV had always seemed interesting and approachable.
My friends laughed and said I'd probably get bored with it pretty quickly. I told them that was fine. I'd write one post a week, and if I got bored, I'd switch to one a month so it would still look like something was happening. xD
Wait, There's a Community Here?
Before that, I'd mostly encountered DEV articles through tech newsletters. I knew basically nothing about the platform itself. So little, in fact, that when @ben once commented on one of my articles, I remember wondering why his one-line comment had received so many likes. ๐คฆโโ๏ธ๐
Eventually, I realized there was a feed here. A whole stream of posts, a community!
And there's something you should know about me.
A long, long time ago, I worked on the side as an editor for the biggest internet portal in Poland. And even by those standards, I have to admit I was pretty good at it โ especially at finding interesting topics and coming up with headlines. ๐
Working in media is incredibly addictive, and that addiction came back immediately. You know, like an alcoholic who hasn't had a drink in ten years and decides to have "just one beer."
Okay, that's an exaggeration.
But only slightly. ๐
I started publishing on DEV much more often than once a week because I wanted to see "what gets clicks here". Or, translated into normal-person language, "what are people here actually interested in?" I still remember how excited I was about my first like, my first comment, or when one of my posts finally passed 25 views. ๐
And even better: on DEV, I could use my old editorial skills, but I could do it well. No impossible traffic targets to hit. No annoying publishers. No need to squeeze every last drop out of one topic until everyone is sick of it. I could rotate topics. Under my own name, in my own words.
So, Here Are a Few of My Blogging Rules
So what are my publishing "rules"? Maybe some of you will find these useful.
A headline can be controversial. It can even stretch things a tiny bit, as long as the content delivers. If it does, readers usually won't feel cheated. I always spend quite a lot of time thinking about titles. And yes, I almost always choose the most controversial one. ๐
If you went back to my earliest posts, you'd also notice that I published pretty chaotically and wrote about somewhat different things than I do now. I started series that I never finished. I experimented with topics. I didn't really know what I was doing yet. And I think that's completely fine. Maybe that will help someone who's currently wondering whether they should start blogging. You don't need to have some grand content strategy from day one.
I've always said that I write half for myself and half for the reader. ๐I don't go to either extreme. I write about things that I think might interest you, but they also have to interest me.
Not every post needs to go viral. I'm fully aware that not every topic will be equally popular. But that doesn't stop me from writing more expert-level technical posts, sometimes with a GitHub repository and a working demo. And there's no point getting upset when those posts attract fewer readers. That's natural. For one thing, not everyone is interested in the same technologies. Meanwhile, obviously everyone is going to click on something called: "You're the real software developer only if..." xD
However, I think that if you want to allow yourself to write posts like that, it's worth first proving that you actually have some credibility in the field you're talking about.
If you want to write about the mistakes senior developers make, then for God's sake, prove that you are a senior developer yourself, that you actually know how to build things, and that you bring something to the community besides clickbait.
And Then There Are the Comments
When it comes to comments, I've often read influencer advice saying that you should only reply selectively. Apparently, you're supposed to create the impression that you're slightly unavailable.
As you probably know, I couldn't care less about that advice. ๐คฃ I try to respond to every valuable comment. Of course, I don't always manage. Sometimes I miss one, forget about it, don't notice it, and so on.
But generally, I genuinely think that many of the discussions under my articles are much better than the articles themselves. ๐
From "Something for My Slide" to Conference Invitations
As you probably know, I like speaking at conferences.
Over time, the blog was promoted from "something to put on my slide" to "something I can put in a CFP form to show that I'm active in the community."
But over the last six months, that situation has changed dramatically. More than once, I've actually been INVITED to speak at a conference because someone found one of my DEV articles and wanted a talk about that topic. Or, less often, I'll attach one of my articles to a CFP so that the committee knows roughly what the talk would be about.
And let me tell you: this is probably the most comfortable situation possible. The organizer can relax because they know what to expect. I can relax because I know what the organizer has already accepted. Win-win!
But DEV Would Be Nothing Without the People
And, of course, DEV would be nothing without the people I've met here.
I obviously have to mention @pascal_cescato_692b7a8a20, who I think was the first person here with whom I started having discussions about all kinds of completely different topics.
Then there are the two Daniels:
@dannwaneri gives me a glimpse into what life as a developer looks like in a different part of the world.
@gramli, on the other hand, is living proof that across Eastern Europe we apparently have very similar problems, and a very similar sense of humor. ๐
There's @georgekobaidze, who seems completely different from me, yet somehow, at the end of the day, we always end up having the same obsessions. ๐
And I can't forget about @adamthedeveloper, @anchildress1, @pengeszikra, @xulingfeng, and many, many more, but DEV allows to tag a maximum of 10 users here ๐ .
Thanks to founders for building the platform I originally chose because I liked the layout. Turns out it was a pretty good choice. ๐ โค๏ธ
And honestly, I could mention many, many more people here. I'd run out of evening. ๐
So What's Next?
What am I planning for the next year? I'm not going to say anything like "I'm only getting started!", because that wouldn't be true. I plan to do exactly what I've been doing so far: publish roughly one post a week.
Sometimes I'm tempted by other distribution platforms, but then I quickly realize that I'd have to spend time figuring those out too, and time is something I don't have much of.
I'm also a little tempted by YouTube, mostly as an extension of what I'm already doing on DEV. Will I actually do it? We'll see!
So, for my DEV anniversary, I wish myself exactly the same amount of joy from writing that I have today. And I wish all of you all the best! โค๏ธ
Top comments (131)
OHHH I was waiting for this for a while! Glad you wrote about this and happy 1 year anniversary on DEV!
It looks like we share something similar, which is our origin, except mine was OCD. I guess the only way is up after reaching the bottom and here we are!
I am glad you are still here at DEV after all this time. 2026 seems like a good year to meet new people and I am proud of you!
Was hoping if you want to meet on Video Chat sometime like @hemapriya_kanagala and @heyitsjem? Would be nice to meet you! :D
Congrats again!
Aww, thank you so much, Francis! โค๏ธ And yes, I think there's definitely something to that! Sometimes it's exactly those really difficult experiences that finally push us to make changes we probably wouldn't have made otherwise.
And I'd be happy to join you for a video chat! The earliest I could realistically do it would be sometime next week, though, because I still have one more conference coming up before that. ๐
Sounds great! Preferably email since it's much easier for me. Do let me know in email when you would like to meet ( Located on my portfolio :) ).
Unless you want to share your email here, I am fine with that too!
Sounds great! ๐ Iโll email you once Iโm back from the conference and we can figure out a time that works for both of us.
Reading this brought me back to the very beginning.
You were the first person I really connected with on DEV. We started writing here almost at the same time, and somehow our conversations quickly became about much more than the posts themselves.
I still remember your comment on Respiration, when you told me you'd patiently wait for whatever I would write next, whenever the time was right. I don't think I ever told you how much that meant to me at the time.
So reading this today, and discovering that I was also one of the first people with whom you started having those kinds of conversations... well, that feels quite special.
You've been one of the people I've valued most here from the very beginning โ not because we always agree, but because I know that when you have something to say, there's usually something worth thinking about.
I'm really glad we found each other here, Sylwia.
Yes, Pascal, I remember Respiration! โค๏ธ And I remember that, apart from its literary value of course, that article made me realize just how differently people approach things in general.
I write every week. You write whenever you feel like you have something to say โ sometimes several posts almost one after another, sometimes nothing for weeks. And that's absolutely okay. There are different paths, different perspectives, different ways of creating, and I think those differences are actually what makes getting to know other people so interesting.
And I think that's true about our conversations too. We don't always see things the same way, but that's probably exactly why we've had so many interesting discussions over this past year. ๐
Which, of course, doesn't change the fact that I'm still waiting for whatever you write next. And I'll keep waiting patiently. โค๏ธ
And I think you've just described quite well why I've enjoyed our conversations so much. ๐
We don't need to agree to have a good discussion โ quite the opposite. You make me reconsider things, sometimes change my mind, and sometimes just sharpen my own position. That's rare enough to be valuable.
And apparently, after a year, you're still waiting patiently for the next post. ๐ I'll try not to keep you waiting too long. โค๏ธ
Hahaha, maybe I'm actually a bit weird, but I genuinely enjoy when someone disagrees with me or points out gaps in my thinking, as long as they do it respectfully, of course. ๐ It gives me a chance to look at something from a completely different perspective.
Plus, it usually means they actually READ the thing! ๐ I remember publishing a post about a very simple AI agent, and people basically started doing a code review in the comments. ๐คฃ Of course, they kept adding that they understood why the agent was so simple because it was educational content, but still โ I loved it!
Those are probably my favorite discussions here: when someone actually makes me think.
And well... now you've made me curious about that next post, so I guess I'll be waiting slightly less patiently from now on. ๐โค๏ธ
๐ Well, that's probably the danger of telling someone you enjoy being challenged: sooner or later they start feeling responsible for keeping the discussion interesting.
And yes, I completely agree โ a disagreement is often the clearest proof that someone actually read what you wrote. A polite โgreat post!โ is nice, but โI think you're wrong here, and here's whyโ is much more interesting. ๐
As for the next post... I'll try to make sure your newly reduced patience is not entirely wasted. ๐โค๏ธ
Happy DEV anniversary! Your editor background makes so much sense. Youโre really good at finding an interesting angle and then writing all about it without beating it to death.
I really liked the โhalf for myself and half for the readerโ part, too. I think thatโs a big reason your posts work so well. You can tell that you actually care about what youโre writing, but you also clearly know how to make other people care enough to keep reading.
Keep up the great work! ๐ฅณ
Thank you so much, Ashley! โค๏ธ It's especially great to hear this because yes, that's exactly what I'm trying to achieve!
Even when I'm building a demo, I often deliberately think about what I can do to make it entertaining for people to play with, not just technically interesting.
And the funniest part is that while apparently my posts are fun and easy to read, I'm usually having just as much fun writing them. ๐ I think that's probably a big part of why this whole thing still works for me after a year. ๐
I used to, right up until I wrote this one. But I understand the sentiment, for sure. ๐ I'm glad you're still enjoying it. That's the most important part.
Yes, I completely understand your perspective too! And at the end of the day, blogging isn't a job. There's really no reason to force yourself to keep doing it once it stops being enjoyable. I think protecting that enjoyment is probably more important than any posting schedule or consistency streak. โค๏ธ
@sylwia-lask - This was a great read, and I'm very happy you accidentally ended up here. ๐
I remember what it felt like to put those first few posts out into the world and wonder whether anyone would read them, let alone respond. I still get some version of that feeling now, although after years of writing it has definitely changed.
Your โhalf for myself and half for the readerโ rule especially resonated with me. I've gradually developed my own criteria for what makes something worth publishing, but one of the most important is still that I have to genuinely care about the question I'm writing about. Some of my favorite posts have started with little more than โHuh, that's interesting...โ and gone somewhere I hadn't planned.
I also really like your point that you don't need a grand content strategy from day one. I've worked with corporate content strategies where that strategy absolutely matters: there are audiences to reach, products to support, messages to reinforce, and outcomes you're trying to produce. Personal writing gets to be much more flexible. You can follow the interesting question, abandon a series that stopped being interesting, write something completely outside your usual subject area, or discover the strategy only after you've written enough to see the pattern. Writing itself changes what you notice, what you're curious about, and sometimes even what you think. Looking back, I certainly couldn't have predicted where some of my own writing would eventually take me.
In fact, this may have given me the nudge to write about my own journey and the publishing rules I've picked up along the way. ๐
Congratulations on the first year, and more importantly, I'm glad you're part of the community. Keep writing. Plenty more accidental posts are waiting to happen.
Thank you so much, Ken! ๐ And yes, Iโd genuinely love to read that meta-post about your own journey and the publishing rules youโve developed along the way!
Iโm also curious about the corporate content strategy part. I understand defining the target audience, goals, key messages, etc., but is there usually a feedback loop built into it as well? Do you regularly adjust the strategy based on what actually resonates with readers, or is it more like: โthis is the strategy, these are the goals, now we executeโ? ๐
Yes, absolutely. I think a good corporate content strategy needs a feedback loop, but I'd make that broader than simply looking at which posts got the most views and doing more of those.
Sometimes the feedback tells you whether a particular piece of content worked. Sometimes it tells you something about the audience you already have. And sometimes, more interestingly, it exposes an audience you didn't know you had.
Take your JavaScript content as a hypothetical example. You have a strong body of work around JavaScript and web development. Suppose you suddenly started getting repeated questions like, โHow would this work on mobile?โ or โCould I use this on an IoT device?โ or โWhat changes if this runs at the edge?โ One comment is just a comment. If that pattern keeps appearing, though, you've learned something. An adjacent audience may ask you to take what you already know somewhere new.
Corporate content works similarly. A company might have a very specific idea of what it means by โdeveloper,โ then discover that a surprising amount of engagement is actually coming from DevOps or platform engineers. That can be much more strategically important than discovering that list posts get 15% more traffic.
The difference is that a company then has to decide what to do with that information. Sometimes the response is, โAh! DevOps! We've been overlooking an important audience.โ ๐ That might change the content strategy, examples, documentation, events, messaging, or even eventually the product.
Other times the response is basically, โYes, we see them. They're not an audience we're interested in pursuing.โ That's also a legitimate strategic decision. The important thing is that the observation made it back into the strategy process rather than everyone continuing to execute against an audience definition nobody has questioned in three years.
I've actually had a small version of the opposite problem in my own writing recently. I wrote a Rust article, and it performed poorly compared with a lot of my other work. The easy conclusion would be, โMy readers aren't interested in Rust, so don't write about Rust.โ
But I don't think the evidence supports that conclusion yet. Another perfectly plausible explanation is that I haven't built a Rust audience. Most of the people who already know my writing know me for databases, developer education, APIs, architecture, AI systems, and related subjects. If I suddenly publish one Rust article, why should the Rust community know or care?
Those explanations lead to completely different decisions. If I genuinely wanted Rust to become part of my content strategy, one underperforming article probably shouldn't stop me. I might need to publish several useful Rust pieces, participate in that community, and give an audience time to form before I could reasonably evaluate the idea. On the other hand, if I don't care enough about Rust to make that investment, the experiment can simply remain an interesting experiment.
That's why I think the feedback loop has to include interpretation, not just metrics. โThis got 500 viewsโ is an observation. โThere is no audience for thisโ is a conclusion, and there can be quite a gap between those two things.
The same applies in the other direction. If you repeatedly write about JavaScript and unexpectedly attract people asking about edge computing, you haven't automatically proven that you should pivot toward edge computing. You've discovered a signal worth investigating.
Personal writing gives you enormous freedom there. You can think, โHuh, that's interesting,โ write an edge article next week, and see what happens. In a corporate setting, that discovery usually has to travel back through DevRel, content, marketing, product, or whoever owns the strategy. Sometimes the organization follows the newly discovered audience, and sometimes it deliberately doesn't.
So yes, I definitely think the strategy should adapt based on what happens after publication. I just wouldn't let the analytics dashboard make the strategic decision on its own. Content can tell you what happened. Readers can tell you things you didn't know to ask. Then somebody still has to decide what those signals mean and whether they change where you're going.
And now you've added another section to the meta-post you asked me to write. ๐
Oh, this is REALLY interesting. And I'm starting to realize that quite a few things I do mostly by intuition actually fit surprisingly well into what you're describing here. ๐
Your Rust example is a great one. I immediately thought that if I suddenly published an article about databases, it would probably get very little interest too. Not necessarily because nobody on DEV cares about databases, but because... why would anyone currently associate me with databases?
At the same time, because I mostly write about things I'm genuinely interested in, I don't really make huge pivots like that. Even now, when I'm moving slightly more toward agentic AI because that's what fascinates me at the moment, somehow I still keep dragging it back toward the UI and the browser. Because, surprise surprise, those things fascinate me too. ๐ So the adjacent audience grows, but the connection to what I was already known for doesn't completely disappear.
And I think I do something similar with feedback. Sometimes I see a question or a recurring theme in the comments and think, โOh, maybe I should write about this.โ But sometimes I deliberately don't react to the signal. For example, I don't really write content for complete beginners. There is obviously an enormous audience for it, but it simply doesn't interest me enough to build my writing around it.
So apparently, completely by accident, I'm behaving a little like a company with a content strategy. ๐
Because yes, I joke all the time that I have no personal-brand strategy whatsoever, but obviously that's not entirely true. Like everyone else, I still want to be perceived in some particular way. I'd rather be seen as someone with expertise in certain areas than, for example, someone who's just entering the industry. So even without a formal strategy, there are still boundaries around what I write and what kind of audience I'm interested in building.
And I can see how much more explicit this becomes in corporate content, where โwhy are we creating this?โ and โwho exactly are we creating it for?โ have much bigger consequences.
Actually, I think the worst situation might be when the answers to those questions are โI don't knowโ and โfor ourselves.โ ๐ I sometimes see content like that on DEV: technically excellent, beautifully polished, clearly requiring a huge amount of work... and yet I genuinely can't figure out who it's supposed to interest.
So yes, you've definitely convinced me that the feedback loop isn't just โlook at what performed well and make more of it.โ It's also about deciding which signals are relevant to where you actually want to go.
And hahaha, excellent. At this rate I'm apparently crowdsourcing your entire meta-post in the comments. ๐
I think โapparently I have an emergent content strategyโ may be the conclusion here.
And honestly, what you're describing isn't that different from a corporate content strategy. You just have the enormous organizational advantage of having one person making the decisions instead of several departments and stakeholders trying to agree on them.
You see a signal, decide whether it fits what interests you and what you want to be known for, and either follow it or deliberately don't.
I really like your beginner-content example because I think that applies equally to individuals and companies. An audience can be large, visible, and demonstrably interested without being an audience you actually want to build around. The signal tells you the opportunity exists. It doesn't tell you that pursuing it is the right strategy.
The corporate version just makes that decision more explicit, and usually more complicated. โWe found an audienceโ still has to become โIs this an audience we want to serve, and does serving it move us toward where we're trying to go?โ
So perhaps the difference isn't personal content versus corporate content as much as who gets to make the decision and how many people have to agree with it.
Also, yes, at this point I may have to add you to the acknowledgments for the meta-post.
Hahaha, I'm getting more and more impatient for this meta-post now. ๐ At this point I definitely expect to see myself in the acknowledgments!
Looking back at my own article, I realize most of my advice was very much based on common sense and intuition: โdon't be afraid of a controversial headline,โ โdon't be afraid to just start,โ โtalk to people,โ etc. But I actually think even a simplified version of this corporate-style content strategy could help a lot of individual writers.
Something like: Who do I want to reach? What do I want to be known for? What signals am I getting from the audience? Which of those signals do I actually want to follow? That's already much more useful than simply chasing whatever got the most views last week.
Although I also think there's one frustrating factor we can't really turn into a framework: plain old luck. ๐ Sometimes success seems to come from this weird, almost impossible-to-reproduce combination of skills, timing, circumstances, people, platform dynamics, and simply being in the right place at the right moment.
Of course, for luck to have any chance of finding you, you first have to keep trying and putting things out there. ๐ You can't be in the right place at the right time if you never show up in the first place.
So you can probably increase your chances by doing a lot of things right, but I'm not sure you can ever completely engineer the outcome. And maybe that's part of what makes it interesting. ๐
At this point, the acknowledgments are unavoidable.
And I think those four questions you listed are actually a pretty good lightweight content strategy on their own. You don't need a quarterly editorial plan and seventeen KPIs. Knowing who you want to reach, what you want to be known for, what signals you're receiving, and which of those signals you actually want to follow gets you surprisingly far.
I also think you're right about luck, and that's probably what keeps this from becoming a formula. You can improve the writing, understand your audience, participate in the community, publish consistently, and generally increase the number of opportunities for something interesting to happen. You still can't engineer which article catches at exactly the right moment, who reads it, or what conversation it starts.
Maybe the distinction is that you can engineer more opportunities for an outcome without being able to engineer the outcome itself.
And even when luck hands you a signal, strategy still matters. An unexpected audience showing up doesn't automatically mean you should chase it. Sometimes the right response is โthat's interesting, but it isn't where I want to go.โ
Which is convenient timing, because the meta-post we've apparently been crowdsourcing here is now an actual draft. I think this conversation has given me a couple of things it was still missing, so the article is imminent. And yes, I suppose you're getting an acknowledgment now.
Congratulations on your one-year anniversary on DEV! ๐
I really admire the way you decided to start trying new things when you were going through such a difficult period. Turning that into speaking at
JS Poland, and then somehow turning โsomething for my About Me slideโ into a blog that now leads to conference invitations, is an amazing journey.Thank you also for sharing the secret behind why your articles are so engaging ๐ธ
It was especially interesting to see how your previous experience as an editor still shows up in the way you choose topics and headlines. And the idea of writing โhalf for myself and half for the readerโ really stuck with me. That feels like a very healthy balance, and something I want to keep in mind for my own writing too.
Also, I really like your attitude toward comments!
Some of the best parts of DEV really do happen in the discussions below the articles.
Keep it up, and letโs keep growing together! ๐ธ
Thank you so much! โค๏ธ Oh yes, once you've spent a few years working in an editorial team, I feel like that way of thinking simply becomes impossible to remove from your brain. ๐
I've never tried to hide the fact that I write for other people. But of course, the topic has to genuinely interest me too. If something interests only me and nobody else, I might as well write it in my diary โ much less work that way. ๐คฃ
And thank you again! I'm really happy that we're both part of this community and can keep growing here together. โค๏ธ
This is quite inspiring Sylwia.
1 post / week is totally awesome, being not able to even START posting ๐, this seems quite unachiveable to me. And it is not the count only, the content is always great. so it is no surprise you get this read numbers and get invited to conferences. keep on.
Thank you so much, Alptekin! โค๏ธ If I could give you one piece of advice, it would be this: if you're struggling to start publishing, make your first post about... literally anything. Seriously! ๐ Just publish something and break that barrier.
I don't even polish my own posts that much. They have a relatively short lifespan anyway, and they really don't need to be perfect. It's DEV, not Hemingway. ๐
Starting is much more important than making that first post brilliant.
Thank you Sylwia, you are right!
The most striking part isn't the 380k reads โ it's that you climbed out of a genuinely dark summer by making things, and this grew from it almost by accident. Happy anniversary. ๐
Thank you so much! โค๏ธ Yes, exactly! Although to be fair, if it hadn't been the blog, I probably would have found something else to throw myself into. ๐
At one point I was even exploring the idea of singing in a band... except their repertoire was mostly hits from the 70s. ๐ So perhaps DEV was the safer path after all. ๐คฃ
Ha, honestly the band might've been the bolder timeline โ DEV just got a very good writer while the world got robbed of your 70s covers. ๐ But I think you're right that the specific outlet mattered less than the instinct to throw yourself into something when things got hard. That's the whole trick, really. Some people freeze, you went looking for a stage โ library, blog, or a suspiciously disco-heavy band. ๐ค๐ Glad the dice landed on writing. We'd have missed this.
Exactly! ๐ I actually think that's pretty good advice for getting yourself out of a low point. Probably not something that works for everyone, of course, but finding something to throw your energy into can really help.
And for the record, I was actually doing pretty well in that band! ๐ The only problem was that our audience was mostly 70+, so I think I can identify with the DEV community a little more easily. ๐คฃ
Apparently the singing was fine. The product-market fit was the problem. ๐
Ha, "the singing was fine, the product-market fit was the problem" is the most developer way anyone's ever explained leaving a band. ๐ You basically ran market analysis on your own chorus and pivoted to DEV.
But yeah, you nailed it โ when you're in a low spot the trick isn't fixing everything, it's just finding something to throw yourself into and letting momentum take over. Band, blog, one page of a book, whatever. Same medicine, different dose. Glad you found your crowd here โ we're basically the 70+ audience anyway: a bit grumpy, weirdly loyal, and we'll always clap for a good encore. ๐๐
Hahaha, there actually is something very 70+ about developers when you put it that way. ๐ Grumpy, opinionated, weirdly loyal... yep, checks out. ๐คฃ But definitely my favorite 70+ crowd! โค๏ธ And clearly one with excellent taste. ๐
Ha, "excellent taste" โ says the woman who nearly fronted a 70s covers band, so the bar for taste in this conversation is doing numbers. ๐ But I'll take it. We're the kind of crowd that'll heckle your semicolons and then defend you to the death in a thread โ grumpy and loyal, no contradiction. Honestly you fit right in; you just skipped the part where you waited 40 years to get this cranky. ๐คฃโค๏ธ
The comments part is interesting to me, because I have always tried to engage or reply in some way every time. Well, assuming it isn't toxic. I pretend those don't exist.
It always felt something like "if I am not going to engage in this back and forth with this stranger, then why did I chose to post this publicly?"
Hahaha, exactly! ๐ Nothing annoys me more than taking the time to write someone a long, thoughtful comment and then getting absolutely nothing back. Not even a heart!
At that point I'm like... did you even READ it?! ๐คฃ
If someone spends their time reading what I wrote and then adds something meaningful to the discussion, acknowledging them feels like the absolute minimum. Otherwise, like you said, why publish it publicly in the first place? ๐
Wow, can't believe I actually made the list. ๐โค๏ธ
I'm not sure if you already knew this before writing the article (I think you probably did), but maybe it wouldn't hurt to tell you anyway: I really like reflections. alot.
You thought you were doing something simple. You didn't have a content strategy, you weren't even sure how to write properly for DEV, and yet that simple decision turned into a page with 380k reads and 40k+ followers.
That's not just your uncle Joe randomly waking up one morning and deciding to start a blog.
That's someone who already had something in them. That's you.
Someone with enough power, influence, and gravity to pull people together, get them to read what you wrote, and then have those people gather underneath it to discuss it with you.
I think that's probably the most interesting part of this whole reflection. The numbers are cool, obviously, but what they represent is much more interesting.
And thank you for mentioning me! It's been really cool watching your DEV journey unfold over the past year, and in fact, even though I've been on DEV for 3 years, I only started writing around the same time you did so I've been watching your journey and It's amazing you organize contents, easy-to-understand tutorials and I learn things from them too!
you are very loved in this community and we need more people like you โค๏ธ
Happy one-year DEV anniversary! Here's to another year of questionable headlines, interesting discussions, and accidentally building an audience. ๐๐ฅ
Awww, thank you so much for such a beautiful comment!!! โค๏ธ๐ฅน I don't know if I'm loved by the community, but I can definitely say that I love this community. ๐โค๏ธ
And I actually remember you from the very beginning of my blogging journey! You published an article, I have absolutely no idea anymore what it was about ๐ But I remember reading it and thinking: โWow, this is REALLY good content. I want to write stuff like this too!โ
And yes, I completely agree about the numbers. Of course they're fun to look at (I'm not going to pretend 380k doesn't make me happy ๐), but they're nowhere near as important as the people you meet. That's probably the part of this whole journey I value the most.
And don't worry, the questionable headlines are DEFINITELY staying. ๐คฃ๐คฃ๐คฃ
I opened this post as soon as I got notification. Finished reading and it has 21 likes and 5 comments already. By the time I finish this comment, it will probably be even more :D
I might not comment that much, and I didn't even login to DEV for some time lately. But I like your style, and how deep your articles are and I read them when I can. And I can see why other people feel the same :)
Happy anniversary!
Thank you so much for the kind words, Kamil! ๐ And of course, people read whenever they have the time. I don't read everything on DEV either, not even everything I'm genuinely interested in. If I tried, I'd probably have no life left. ๐
So I really appreciate that you still find the time to read my articles when you can! โค๏ธ
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