Motivations

I can't imagine where I would be in my career without the open-source community. Unfortunately however, the current flow of information between me and that community is a one-way street. Like many other software developers, I have a desire to pay it forward, and the creation of a "Digital Garden" will be my first step toward doing so.

My main motivation to become a so-called "digital gardener", however, is to accelerate my technical learning curve. I work primarily in the front-end development space, and the Javascript ecosystem moves at an overwhelming pace. My hope is that the underlying organizational principles of a digital garden will help boost my growth rate by enforcing a particular note-taking style centered around the concept of evergreen notes.

Evergreen notes are written and organized to evolve, contribute, and accumulate over time, across topics. This type of knowledge system diverges from the more traditional form of note-taking. While it's convenient to quickly jot down transient thoughts, we're often left with a collection of dissociated notes that get discarded over time. On the other hand, evergreen notes are organized by conceptual links rather than by chronological order. By associating notes to one another using bi-directional links, I can absorb information in a manner that aligns a bit better with the natural associative processes of the human brain. Accordingly, my contributions to this site will live in a markdown editor called Obsidian, which helps enforce this organizational structure. (For more on the principles of evergreen notes, check out Andy Matuschak's site)

Ever since becoming a software developer, I've wanted to start a blog. I have no doubt that taking the time to think through and articulate the details of some new topic–whether that be a framework, design pattern, or architectural principle–is an extremely effective way to gain a better grasp on any given technical concept.

Naturally, I've always been a bit apprehensive when it comes to publishing a technical article. And I think I have good reasons for feeling this way. It would be naive to discount the preconceived notions around traditional software blogs. There is a standard for technical content that needs to be met. Half-baked opinions or ill-advised explanations won't cut it for those of us spending the majority of our work days looking for technical solutions. Unfortunately however, such expectations around quality present a challenge for those of us who want to publish technical content.

Enter Digital Gardening

Fortunately, the digital garden has been popularized as an alternative to the traditional software blog, and its fundamentals are predicated on this idea of evergreen note-taking. Mike Caufield describes a digital garden as space that offers "a different way of thinking about our online behaviour around information - one that accumulates personal knowledge over time in an explorable space." While my goal for learning any new technology falls somewhere between proficiency and mastery, a digital garden accommodates for all levels of competency by providing a flexible space designed for those of us with a growth-oriented mindset.

Unlike a traditional blog, a digital garden is not a well-polished repository of authoritative insights. Rather, it is a low-friction space for thoughts to be planted and tended to over time. Contributions should be frequent, and at times–unapologetically messy. Such an environment significantly lowers the barrier to entry for creating a technical blog, which to me is the principal benefit of creating this website.

Vision

I'm excited to use this site to explore a broad range of front-end related topics. My hope is that my digital garden serves as a platform for personal growth throughout my career as a software engineer. With a bit of discipline, curiousity, and time, I hope to look back at this endeavor as one that helped me become a better developer and inspired others to grow as well.