November 10, 2026
Why are blogs still relevant? Or are they still relevant?
That is the T-SQL Tuesday topic from Jeff Iannucci and here are my thoughts.
Blogging is an easier point of entry than making videos.
Learning writing skills is part of education in most parts of the world. We had many teachers who assigned the dreaded essay throughout our years in school. Rarely, if ever, did we get an assignment to make a video. Because of this alone, blogging is more within reach, for a greater number of people, than other forms of conveying information.
Blogging forces you to think.
“What do I want to say? How should it be organized? Have I used the words that best convey my meaning and intention?” These are all valuable questions to help sharpen communication, both written and verbal.
Blogging is a great way to record your own learning.
Having to write out what you did in a demo or something you did at work cements that learning. The blog then both cements the learning and provides instructions for yourself the next time you have to do that thing. I’ve looked up my own blog posts quite a bit to get part of a script or remind myself of how to do something when it’s been awhile.
Blogging makes your learning available for others to access.
Your lessons, recorded for the world to access, can help others. This makes blogging a relevant way to give back to others. Sure there are lots of blogs on lots of topics already – but your voice hasn’t been added until you write and post it. From a slightly different angle on this point, other people access your learning and can get a sense of whether you know what you’re talking about – and that might lead to job opportunities,
Blogging forces you to learn something beyond the topic you’re blogging about.
When I started blogging years ago, I had to learn something about web hosting and WordPress. When I recently moved my blog to an Azure Static website, I was exposed to all kinds of things I wouldn’t have ever looked at otherwise. For example, that move is forcing me to learn Markdown, which can be useful in other scenarios too! And, because HTML and CSS was used in other parts of the move of my site, I’m interested in that too now. Blogging is expanding my horizons beyond SQL Server.
All of that learning can seem overhwleming, but it can also give you conrfidence that you can still learn new things, even things that are only tangentially related to what you do everyday for you job.
Conclusion
This is my cat Arwynne. She thinks you should blog. If her cuteness doesn’t convince you, nothing else will!
