Why did I create this website and start blogging

Accessibility of knowledge

There is always someone out there in need.

I often find myself looking for an article or a tutorial on some very specific subject that I am interest in; in which case I often end up on similar looking websites. Simple personal websites with very little(if any) javascript.

One of my newer hobbies(which is super niche) is exploring the world of next gen keyboards aka ergonomic split keyboards¹ and everything that goes with them² and I can not stress enough how many times I ended up on small personal websites with the writer being interested in the same thing as me.

I am also a firm believer of the idea that knowledge should be as readily accessible as possible, if you need knowledge on a certain topic then obtaining the said knowledge should require as little friction as possible.

For my own sake

• Satisfaction

  Putting the help and need part aside, I simply find the idea of having a personal website and populating it with one's own ideas and knowledge and just content in general very joyful, gratifying and fun! There is a great video by Eric Murphy on the personal website and that they can be more than just "glorified business cards". You can watch the video here.

  It is no secret that I really like talking about Neovim but there are two issues, let's call them.

  1. It's not easy to find like-minded individuals due to the nerdy nature of neovim.
  2. The conversations will most probably be lost.

  With the personal website neither of these issues matters. Because you can just write a blog about the topic in mind and simply publish it. Someone will eventually read it and even if they do not, it is still satisfying to simply write your mind out.

  You can also be rest assured that your blogs would not go anywhere unlike chatting on social media; you can come back to your old blogs and reflect on them and see how you, as a person, have grown throughout time.

  In this sense it is similar to a diary. I cringe when I go back to my old writing from when I was in middle school but just having something from those times to which one can go back is simply "heart-warming".

• Teaching = learning

  This one is pretty simple.

  You only ever know something really well if you can teach it to others. Fireship once said that most of his knowledge(which is very vast by the way) comes from his youtube channel and all the videos he has made and continues to make.

  So sharing my knowledge with the outside world, or even attempting to do so, will cement my skills and knowledge or even challenge me and make me more competent in case I'm not competent enough. And we all know:

  With competence comes confidence.

Why build this website in zola?

Before the idea of having a personal website occurred to me I had never even heard of static site generators aka SSGs.

In case you do not know, they are tools(programs better say) that simplify the process of creating static websites like this one. Static websites are great for blogs where the website is hardly dynamic and does not change often. Instead, new content is added, content that uses the same html template over and over again.

I chose zola for the following reasons:

1. I like rust-based tools and programs(call them overrated or whatever you want, but I personally can not live without fd and ripgrep)
2. It is a single binary. So implementing CI/CD for instance is much easier.
3. It is simple and minimal by default which is always a plus for me.
4. It uses the tera template engine which I am quite used to from django.

I could have also gone with hugo which is also pretty fast and has probably the biggest community out of them all but I heard the go template engine is clunky to use and I had already begun learning zola so I stuck with that.

So what is this blog going to be about?

Anything goes but mostly tech and coding content. Tutorials, rants, thoughts, you get the idea.

Summary

I started blogging because there is always someone out there who would find my content useful; besides that, I simply like the idea of having my own website and blog and find it fun. Lastly, teaching requires you to be really good at what you teach which is what I am after.

So go ahead, build your own website and populate it with the output of your mind. It is a joyful experience I promise:)