May 9, 2008 at 12:00 pm
For all those who have posted that they don't write due to fear of being wrong. The one article I have written did not have anything "wrong", but after submitting the article I found some things that I wish I had done differently in the code that went with the article. No one else mentioned it, and all the responses to the article were positive. I was actually disappointed that someone didn't post that there was a better way to do it! The article came out of something interesting I had learned and implemented at work using SSIS and I thought it might point some people in the right direction.
My point is on a site like SSC most people are true professionals and are more likely to add to your article than pick it apart. That, in itself, is reason enough to write an article, you may learn a better way to do what you are writing about.
Jack Corbett
Consultant - Straight Path Solutions
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May 9, 2008 at 12:54 pm
I agree with the others that I don't have anything great to add. But all of the articles you do submit have been very helpful. I appreciate the time you take to write an article that will help all of us get better at what we do.
As someone who has also written documentation, you are writing. To write something that another user can pick up and follow along and duplicate is a real feat. I always feel good when someone thanks me for explaining something very simply. I also write the documentation to help me. Things come up, I do them, but then I move onto something else and I forget what I did. The documentation helps me recreate what I did previously.
If it hasn't been said lately, thanks Steve for all you do on this site and helping all of us be better in our profession
May 9, 2008 at 1:11 pm
The first comment of the first article I submitted for SSC was complaining my grammar !!!
Actually that was not it, one time I had to write a report and when the tester tested it, the first thing she wrote was that my title of my report was grammatically wrong. She said the first alphabetic of each word of the title had to be capital letter except 'of', 'the' . I appreciated her help but I also felt it was humiliated. I forward her email to her boss, the project leader and my manager and said I needed to take an English writing class before I could do the project!!!
For all the documentations, I write it as simple as possible, most of the time I write it liked I write a program and as long as people understands and no one complains, I don't care. Chances are the one who read the documentation are programmers too, so they don't really care about the grammar.
I always say, if I am good at English, I would be a writer, a lawyer not a programmer.
May 9, 2008 at 1:18 pm
I'm basically just lazy.
I even have a good idea today - I wish I were a bit more motivated.
May 9, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Michael Earl (5/9/2008)
I'm basically just lazy.I even have a good idea today - I wish I were a bit more motivated.
I'll take any ideas you aren't motivated enough to use!
Jack Corbett
Consultant - Straight Path Solutions
Check out these links on how to get faster and more accurate answers:
Forum Etiquette: How to post data/code on a forum to get the best help
Need an Answer? Actually, No ... You Need a Question
May 10, 2008 at 9:07 am
Wow - lots of good stuff!
For me, I write because of a passion for sharing knowledge (Phil Factor said this much more eloquently on page 1...).
I'm not good at writing but I'm getting better the more I do it. It's a skill that I struggle with, an art for which I lack the knack.
And errors? Goodness. If I didn't write for fear of errors I wouldn't ever write.
Like others, I write because I learned so much from reading the good work of others - I want to contribute to the knowledge of those behind me on this path. Also like others, I regularly pop my name and some topic into a search engine to find an article / post I wrote some time ago... because I need it now!
:{> Andy
Andy Leonard, Chief Data Engineer, Enterprise Data & Analytics
May 10, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Actually, the real reason why I write is because... I can't remember stuff no mo'. 😛
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
May 12, 2008 at 8:50 am
I wrote an article on CodeProject about a C# .Net windows application that I developed using Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) to read a schedule that is published in Excel and add the events as calendar entries in Microsoft Outlook. The Excel file is published by NASA for each Space Shuttle mission and it contains the schedule of events for the mission.
I published key portions of the code with an explanation of what the functions did, some cool stuff using regular expressions, and about some of the problems I encountered during the development of the program. Converting between time zones was challenging; .Net 2.0 could convert from local time to UTC and back, but not between Central Time and Eastern Time. I had to solve the problem of the transition period, when Daylight Saving Time ends in one time zone.
The CodeProject Article:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/office/NasaTvSchedule.aspx
The Project Page for NASA Space Shuttle TV Schedule Transfer to Outlook Calendar
http://www.codeplex.com/NasaStsTvSchedule
Ralph Hightower
May 12, 2008 at 11:45 am
I'd love to write more (on numerous sites such as this one), but I cannot for 2 main reasons: (1) no free time; and (2) limited exposure to high level SQL stuff.
(1) My primary role at the place where I work is to code in Microsoft Dynamics NAV. At this point, my "backup" left to join another company and I have 2 rookies that I am trying to get trained. My backup didn't provide much assistance, but he could at least help get the 2 new people trained and relieve some of the workload from me.
(2) I have my MSCE and MCDBA, so I get pulled into IT projects from time to time, but I don't get to play around with the inner workings of SQL Server like I used to. I just don't think that the areas I am still very familiar with would be relevant here since there are people that get to spend much more time on the topics than I do.
May 12, 2008 at 11:57 am
I write because I like to communicate in all its myriad forms. (I talk too much, write too much, heck, since I spent a summer with some Italians, I even gesticulate too much!)
I've submitted my first attempt at an article to Steve. Do I expect that it will revolutionize anything important? No. But I did find that I was having to write the same posts over and over again to different people all asking about the same subject, and decided to take all my posts on that subject and turn them into an article. Hopefully, that will be more efficient than continuing to write the same posts over and over again.
Basically, by noticing what gets asked a lot, I deduced there is a "market" for that article. It's really nothing more than an expansion, clarification, and consolidation, of multiple posts on one subject.
Hopefully someone will find it helpful. Even if not, writing it helped me focus my own thoughts on the subject.
I keep trying to write fiction, but I find that I have a lot of great ideas for settings and scenes, but nothing that ties together into a narrative story. I'll keep weaving some of the threads, on the hopes that one of them, one day, will be a garment. Till then (if), I do enjoy putting words together.
For those who worry about writing something and having others (perceived to be more expert) tear it apart and point out all the wrongnesses in it: Actually, that might be a good way to learn, wouldn't it? Might be bruising if you've put too much of your ego on the line with it, but having others review and critique really is a good way to learn.
What if you post an article about concatenating and splitting strings, and three people write better solutions in the comments on the article? Well, you risked being "wrong", and you found three better ways to do something that might actually be useful. You learned! That's my take on it. Just don't tie up your ego in the thing, don't be crushed by criticism.
(And now it's time for me to wander off into the sunset, pontificating about meaningless things, convinced that my compulsive pedantry may have served a noble cause....... (trust me on this one, now that I'm started, if I don't forcibly restrain myself, I'll never stop).) 🙂
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
May 14, 2008 at 9:02 am
Imagine when someone is looking for a solution for a coding problem , its a happy moment when you find what you look for online , more writing means more happy moments for others who are looking for information .
May 15, 2008 at 3:33 pm
I know I'm very late to the conversation, but a few things...
People learn in different ways. Just because there's an article out there describing RAID configurations doesn't mean Joe SysAdmin is going to get it because of that article. Your article, which may come at it in a slightly different direction or just your choice of words, or the fact that Joe SysAdmin is processing multiple articles may lead to Joe "getting it." So just because you see an article out there on something doesn't mean you have to stop from writing about it, too.
You don't have to be an expert to write. One of my first articles on the old swynk.com garnered a reply from none other than Steve Jones who offered a different perspective on the same topic. It gave me a lot of things to think about and I went ahead and amended my article with some of Steve's points because they made a lot of sense. The majority of us aren't in the Kalen Delaney or Itzik Ben-Gan stratosphere of SQL Server knowledge. We don't have to be. Which is a good thing, or I'd have never written anything...
Time is always an issue. It's why I bounce in and out of the forums and the blogs where I'm posting like a madman for a few days and then disappear for weeks at a time. I keep telling Steve I'm going to start writing again and then I get busy between work, family, and ministry. I do know that when I was writing all the time, it was easier to write (as Phil Factor indicated). I do a lot of writing now, but it's for ministry, and I know that's something I'm called to do. Here's the thing, when I was churning out SQL Server articles once or twice a month, I found writing about 15-20 minutes a day was enough to get that kind of output and more. Since I'm writing daily for ministry and since I'm doing a lot of checking, cross-referencing, researching, exegetical analysis, that kind of writing takes a lot longer. But the technical writing is finding a particular topic you have an interest in, spending probably 2-3 hours over the course of a week or two and it's out there. Which I guess incriminates me for not writing on here more. *shrug*
K. Brian Kelley
@kbriankelley
May 15, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Brian, we'd love to have more, and we miss your great information, but we completely understand you working on other projects.
You do what you can, and what your passion is. If it's writing somewhere else, enjoy it. If you want to try it here, let me know.
May 21, 2008 at 7:06 am
Actually, the real reason why I write is because...
I can't remember stuff no mo'.
And you are ? :blink:
lol only kidding Jeff 😉
Keep think about submitting something but can't think of anything that ain't already been done 🙁
Maybe one day ......... 😀
:ermm: wonder if I could plagiarize Jeff's work
All hail Jeff !!! 😎
Far away is close at hand in the images of elsewhere.
Anon.
May 21, 2008 at 6:50 pm
David Burrows (5/21/2008)
Keep think about submitting something but can't think of anything that ain't already been done 🙁
Actually.... everything I've written about is NOT new... Tally table is old hat... has been for a long time. I didn't even invent it. But there are a lot of folks out there that knew nothing of it and, it never hurts to see how other people explain the same thing.
I saw one article by a fellow recently. He wrote about a handful of (I thought) very well known undocumented stored procedures like sp_MSForEachTable. Some folks made some pretty nasty comments about writting about something so obvious. But, to those that don't know, it's no so obvious. Sure, people can search for such things, but like all such research, most folks need to know that such a thing even exists before they can do a search.
I've been following your posts for years, David... you'd write a great article even if it was on something "obvious"... you have the "knack".
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
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