Part of the reason why I keep working on Dev-eryday is to get better as a writer. Every week I post at least a “Weekly Update” post. Writing posts for the site isn’t always the most enjoyable thing, but I never regret the time spent working on them. With each post I feel my writing gets a little better. I’m still nowhere close to the greats, but I’m making progress. This week I read Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works and it’s got me thinking a lot about the style and content of what I’m publishing. There’s a lot of room for growth. The book goes into great detail about how we can make our writing better for people who consume it digitally. It doesn’t just cover content though, it also shares tips on how to present it, improving drafts, testing Anyone writing content on the web should at least skim this book. There are a lot of lessons to be found.

One Step Closer

I did a little exploratory learning this week in the form of learning about Google’s Flutter. With Flutter: Getting Started being released on Pluralsight, it felt like a good time to check out what all the fuss about the SDK is. Flutter is interesting because it allows developers to create native mobile apps for both Android and iOS with one codebase using the Dart programming language. Yes, lots of other SDKs like React Native and Xamarin have sprung up over the years and do similar things, but it’s fun to gain a little insight on how the new options are doing things. Right now, I’m intrigued by Flutter but not keen on using Dart, which reminds me a lot of TypeScript, when I could be using JavaScript, TypeScript, or C# to build apps. I’m going to keep my eyes on Flutter but probably won’t dive in just yet.

Finished

Pluralsight Course(s): Flutter: Getting Started

Book(s): Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works

Currents

Pluralsight Course(s): React 16 - The Complete Guide

Book(s): Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation, Functional Programming in C#: How to Write Better C# Code

On the Next…

This week I’m going to run a lot. My target is 25 miles for the week. With the arrival of September, it was time to start up a new monthly challenge. This month I’ve decided to attempt to run 100 miles. I’m pretty sure that’s far more than I’ve ever ran in a single month. It’s only the second day of the month and I’m up to 15 miles already, 15% of the way to the finish line. It’s probably going to be a struggle, but I think I can make it happen. You have to synthesize the stuff you really want. This challenge will push me physically and likely lead to quite a bit of mental growth too. I’m excited for it.