One day I was scrolling through Twitter, and I saw developers praise Hashnode. I searched about it and signed up for it in February 2021. Hashnode is a free developer blogging platform that allows you to publish articles on your domain and helps you stay connected with the global developer community.
Hashnode has challenges on their site where you can earn badges. The first challenge I participated in was the #2Articles1Week.
The goal of this challenge is to encourage writers to define their writing goals, understand writing standards, become consistent at writing, and build their careers.
As a developer, writing helps you to share knowledge, document your learnings and improve on your writing skills.
Conditions of the challenge
Create a blog on Hashnode.
Announce that you are participating in the challenge on Twitter.
You are supposed to add #2Articles1Week as one of the hashtags on the articles you publish during the challenge.
Tweet your progress on Twitter with the hashtags: #2Articles1Week, #Hashnode.
If you publish two articles per week for two weeks, you unlock a bronze badge.
When you maintain the streak for 3 weeks, you get a silver badge.
And if you maintain the streak for 4 weeks, you unlock the gold badge.
This is what the challenge entails. Learn more about it here: #2Articles1Week
As a code newbie, participating in this challenge was a great opportunity for me to build confidence as a blogger. Here are the lessons I learned:
1. Consistency
The main purpose of the challenge is to write consistently and become better at technical writing. Committing to writing a certain number of blog posts in a week, helps you build the habit of consistency which is an essential soft skill needed as a developer and as a writer.
2. Documenting my learning process.
This is the most important benefit if you are a code newbie. Blogging helps you understand concepts in a broader context. The challenge also helped me to break out of the tutorial hell. This is one of the best gifts you can give to yourself as a code newbie. I learned how to research on the topics I barely understood while watching tutorials and I understood better as I wrote. I have decided to consistently write articles from now on.
3. Sharing knowledge.
Participating in this challenge has helped me build confidence as a developer. Writing helps me share knowledge on the topics am knowledgeable about. Before I began blogging, I was not confident about sharing knowledge about technological concepts and I used to admire other developers sharing content. Since I began this challenge, I built confidence in sharing the little knowledge I have with other developers and in turn, this has improved on the knowledge about the topics in question.
4. Allowing room for improvement through practice.
Writing consistently in the #2Articles1Week challenge has improved my writing skills tremendously as a new writer. One of my fears was that I did not have experience in writing articles and was worried about the quality of my articles what we usually call the imposter syndrome. Try not to let those inner fears discourage you, just do your best and watch yourself grow enormously as a writer. The main reason is to learn in public and that's what matters most. Remember, every expert was once a beginner.
Conclusion
These are the outstanding lessons I have learned in this challenge. If you are new at technical blogging or want to be consistent in publishing articles, I would advise you to participate in this challenge and you will be amazed at the end results. I have picked up an interest in blogging and I love the bonus of receiving badges on my profile.
As usual, thanks for reading!