Blogging can make you a better programmer
Michael Nielsen wrote and interesting piece about thinking and mentions something Stephen Covey did in a seminar:
"Covey has a large group of people in a room, split up into many small groups, each group seated around a small circular table. ... Covey tells people that he is going to make five points over the next ten minutes, and that after he’s done the person sitting at "6 O'Clock" at the table is going to explain the material to everybody else at the table.
"the first of Covey's five points is that the best way to learn is by teaching ... Then he looks around the audience, and asks people to compare the behaviour of the people sitting at 6 O'Clock to those not at 6 O'Clock. Invariably, the people at 6 O'Clock are assiduously taking notes, ... paying much closer attention on average than those not at 6 O'Clock.
"By changing the role of some of the people in that room ... Covey changed the way they perceived themselves, a change that was reflected in vastly more effective behaviour. They began to see themselves as teachers, and this made them much better learners."
It's interesting how something so simple can change your actions, but more interesting to me is how blogging is similar to sitting at 6 O'Clock.
Since I've been writing this blog I've noticed that I've started to take more notes. Originally because I've thought "that's cool I might want to refer to that". But I think the process of taking notes has made me remember more.
The other day I was considering the design of a fairly complex login system and normally I would just have considered what I needed to authenticate the users, but since taking a few notes on Web 2.0 (from articles like this one) which makes the point about how important data is to big web-sites I've altered my thinking about how the login system should work. If data and an on-going conversation with customers is important then you don't want to throw data away nearly so much as you did when you were only interested in authentication.
So the notes I made because I blogged have altered how I design software, and for the better. Which I guess is the point Covey was making in the first place.
Has blogging made you a better at your job? You'll be answering in your blog using trackbacks of course ...