A talk by Bryan Robinson during 11ties: a series of 11 min lightning talks on 11ty, recorded on 11/11, 2020 -- for Jamstack TORONTO.

In part II on your engineering superpower (technical writing), Sophie DeBenedetto talks about how to write well.

Blogging

Try these strategies to help you get started:

• Write an outline first.
• Start with a detailed introduction.
• Write the conclusion first.

If you use the conclusion first approach, focus on what the reader should walk away from your post having learned.

Pull Requests

A good PR description has a few elements:

• A descriptive title.
• An explanation of the what, why, and how.
  • ____ What problem does the code solve?
  • ____ Why is this solution needed?
  • ____ How does the code solve the problem?
• Extras: Anything from usage instructions to info on testing/QA.

How to Write a Ticket

• What problem needs to be solved and why?
• What value does the project gain by delivering this work?

How To Ask For Help

• What is the current behavior? Describe the bug that is occurring.
• Under what circumstances does the behavior occur?
• How does the behavior differ from the expected behavior?

Let's begin by first describing exactly what we're building. I think most developers have a good idea of what a blog is, but every blog is different. For this guide, I will support the following features:

• A home page that displays the last ten blog articles, newest on top. For each blog post, we display the title, date published, and an excerpt of the post.
• A page that displays the blog post. This will have the title, published date, a list of categories assigned to the post, and the contents of the post itself.
• Every blog post will have one or more categories assigned to it. Each category will have its own index page with a list of blog posts assigned to it. Each item in the list will have the title and date of the post, nothing more.
• An author page, basically, who is doing the writing?
• An archives page that lists every single blog post. This will use Eleventy's pagination system.
• A set of category archive pages. The same idea as the main archives page, but unique per category.
• A RSS feed.

In just 3 minutes, get an overview of the essential features available when building a site with 11ty.

Sílvia Bastos

What could I write about today that my future self would benefit from reading?”

Second: 5 (or so) bullets

The truth is, it doesn’t have to be five — it could work as well with a bit less or a few more. Personally, I find seven to be the number that works best for me, but I recommend starting with five to make it easier—then adapt it to your own preferences.

• An inverted solid triangle for creative ideas
• An upright triangle for big wins
• An eye for cues and signs
• A spiral for big lessons and questions to ponder
• A square (that I can use as a checkbox later) for actions and experiments I want to do

Eleventy (aka 11ty) is rising in the ranks among static site generators. This Node-based builder is attractive due to its zero-config starting point, purely static output, and ease of achieving the coveted top Lighthouse performance score of four perfect 100s. Let’s dive into what else makes it unique, and learn about some essential concepts to help you successfully get started.

Paul Lloyd assembles a heavenly host of cherubs to sing the virtues of the Eleventy static site generator. By looking at how it compares to the familiar Ruby-based Jekyll (which we have espoused the virtues of here before), he may have you humming its tune for this season’s holiday projects. But will it put you on cloud eleven?

Over the last month so, I’ve been working with Dr. Julian Jones to port some design system projects from Jekyll over to Eleventy, the feral possum of static site generators. Why undertake a whole replatforming initiative? Well, there were two primary issues we were trying to solve:

https://github.com/madebymike/supermaya
Supermaya is an Eleventy starter kit designed to help you add rich features to a blog or website without the need for a complicated build process.

You can be authentic, unique, and sincere, but your writing has to do one of these three things to succeed.

Entertain
Educate
Inspire

Great writing is alchemy — you take bits of entertainment, mix in some education, and add a dash of inspiration, in order to create remarkable work.

You’re asking the wrong question.

“What process can we come up with so that we are creating something new, every single day?”

Content creation is about Volume. Plain and simple.

Markdeep is a technology for writing plain text documents that will look good in any web browser, whether local or remote. It supports diagrams, calendars, equations, and other features as extensions of Markdown syntax.

A blog is useful for many reasons. It can become a source of leads, it can be the place where, in the future, you might sell your products if you want to become an indie developer, or it can simply be the place where you have your audience and express your ideas.

Interested in writing an article for Perl.com? Perhaps you want to get the word out about your new startup, provide a tutorial on your favorite module, or have community news to share. This document is for you.

Reflect on what you learn by writing

Apart from becoming a better writer, blogging can help you organise your thoughts.

Blogging encourages deep thinking.

When you begin to share what you know with others, your ability to communicate gets better.

Blogging helps your brain to stay active.

You will also be able to link ideas and pieces of information better.

Create and share beautiful images of your source code.
Start typing or drop a file into the text area to get started.

The world is crowded with startups and almost all of them searching for a financial infusion from outside investors. It takes much more than a great idea and an impeccable work ethic to separate yourself from the pack and attract serious investors. You will likely only get one shot at your pitch and it is important that capitalize on that opportunity to maximize the chances that your startup will get the funding you need to get your company off the ground.