On Writing

As I have recently started to work full-time at Kalppo, I want to spend more time writing articles and sharing them with the world. In the rest of the article, I cover reasons why and what’s next?

This article really exists to give me permission and confidence to write, rather than being of genuine utility.

Writing Clarifies Thinking

Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other - William Zinsser, On Writing Well

The process of writing clarifies thinking - when I commit words to a page, it becomes easier to understand my own thought process. An awkward or a vague phrase stands out as unclear, and requiring of more attention.

When I write about a problem, I am constantly making decisions about the goals and non-goals, the steps in solution, dependencies, and more. By capturing the complexity and working on one sub-problem at a time, I reduce the complexity.

It is important to write simply. With clear, plain language, the idea stands on its own merit. Terrible, complicated ideas can be spotted and thrown away. I would recommend Write Simply by Paul Graham and On Writing Well by William Zinsser.

Writing Gives Back

I have learnt so much (work and otherwise) from blogs by Paul Graham, Martin Fowler and other “non-traditional” sources like Youtube, Wikipedia and more. Working in generative AI space - my work stands on top of work of countless people, sharing their efforts. Some of my favorite resources are Hamel’s Blog, LangChain’s youtube channel, Applied LLMs (blog) and Dave Ebbelaar.

Since the early days, the Internet has a tradition of free, accessible knowledge sharing and collaboration. Imagine Serious Eats, a blog that is equal parts cooking science and a recipe book, in a world without the internet. It would be an ridiculously expensive encylopedia and inaccessible to most. Instead, it is freely available, and helps cooks around the world (like me!) to learn more. I want to continue in this tradition, and give back to the world.

Writing Scales

Writing scales better than its alternative, ad-hoc communication. By writing design docs, READMEs and more, other team members (and future me!) can go through the documentation and work independently. It also enables asynchronous discussion - and gives reviewer time to carefully think about the proposal. Read The Almighty Thud by Martin Fowler for a perspective on what to include in code documentation.

Similarily, writing can also travel far - reaching broader audiences than I anticipate. I hope what I write is novel and useful, and builds our reputation as an innovative and credible team. This, in turn helps us with sales, funding and hiring talent.

What’s next?

I expect to write an article once every two weeks or so, either on technology or business side of things. I have a few articles planned - FAQs on Kalppo, benchmark numbers, and some tech articles.

If you don’t write outside of work - give it a try. Try explaining your hobby projects to a newbie, or write about the movies and TV shows that have left a mark on you. The world is a better place for thoughtful, interesting stories.