Coder Legion - Recent posts tagged techwriting

I Built an AI Skill That Screenshots and Records My PC for Tutorials

Wed, 14 Oct 2026 00:05:49 +0000

Every tutorial I write needs the same boring assets: screenshots of each step, a short screen recording, and a vertical clip for reels. I used to do all of it by hand — Print Screen, paste, crop, repeat. So I built an AI skill that does it for me. It's called tutorial-reels, and it lives in my AI agents (Cline, Claude Code, Codex) as five small Python scripts.

This post explains what the skill does and walks through using it, end to end.

What the skill does

The skill drives my real Windows PC — Chrome, Settings, Services, Device Manager — and produces three kinds of output:

Output	Tool	Result
Step screenshots	`focus-shot.py` / `shot.py`	PNGs, one per tutorial step
Web captures	`browse.py`	Full-page PNGs or PDFs via headless Chrome
Reel clips	`record.py` + `to-reel.py`	Vertical 1080x1920 MP4s for Facebook

No new dependencies. Everything runs on tools already on a Windows PC: Python with Pillow, ffmpeg, and Chrome. The skill is just a SKILL.md instruction file plus the scripts, synced to every agent I use.

The hard lesson: focus before you shoot

The first version had an embarrassing bug. When I asked the agent to screenshot my Sound settings, it captured... our chat window. The agent's own window was in front, so every "screenshot" was a picture of the conversation.

The fix became the skill's core idea: minimize everything, force the target window to the front with the Win32 API, wait, then capture. That workflow is now baked into focus-shot.py:

# minimize clutter, open the target, focus + shoot:
powershell -NoProfile -Command "(New-Object -ComObject Shell.Application).MinimizeAll()"
Start-Process ms-settings:sound; Start-Sleep 5
python $env:USERPROFILE\tutorial-reels\scripts\focus-shot.py --out shots/no-sound/step01.png --title Settings --wait 2

The --title flag matches window titles — Settings, Services, Device Manager, Chrome, File Explorer — and brings the right window forward before the shot. One capture per turn: open, focus, shoot, verify, move on.

Tutorial: from zero to published screenshots

Here is the full workflow I used to illustrate my Windows 11 no-sound article with 5 screenshots.

Step 1: Take a focused screenshot

Open the page you want to show, then capture it with the window forced to front:

python $env:USERPROFILE\tutorial-reels\scripts\focus-shot.py --out shots/no-sound/fix1.png --title Settings --wait 2

For a region instead of the full screen, add --region x,y,w,h. If the target is already visibly in front, the plain shot.py is faster (no focus handling).

Step 2: Capture a web page without opening it

For article hero images or full-page captures, browse.py drives headless Chrome — no manual browsing at all:

python $env:USERPROFILE\tutorial-reels\scripts\browse.py --url "https://example.com/page" --shot shots/no-sound/hero.png --window-size 1280,800

It also prints pages to PDF with --pdf, handy for archiving reference pages.

Step 3: Record a short clip for a reel

Screen recordings use ffmpeg's gdigrab — already installed, captures video only. Important: ffmpeg holds the console, so always launch it detached:

Start-Process python -ArgumentList "$env:USERPROFILE\tutorial-reels\scripts\record.py","--out","raw/no-sound-raw.mp4","--seconds","30","--fps","30" -WindowStyle Hidden

Perform the tutorial steps while it records. It stops automatically after --seconds.

Step 4: Convert to a vertical reel

One command center-crops and scales the recording to 1080x1920 with H.264, ready for Facebook:

Start-Process python -ArgumentList "$env:USERPROFILE\tutorial-reels\scripts\to-reel.py","--in","raw/no-sound-raw.mp4","--out","no-sound.mp4" -WindowStyle Hidden

The output drops straight into my existing reel pipeline — the same folder and scheduler that posts my article reels.

Step 5: Embed in the article

Name screenshots after the article slug so everything stays in sync, then embed one image per fix:

![Select the output device in Windows 11 Sound settings](/article-media/windows-11-no-sound-fix1-output-device.png)

Two more things it taught me

Desktop launchers matter. I keep capture.bat and capture.ps1 on my Desktop — capture.ps1 shot, capture.ps1 browse <url>, capture.ps1 record 30 — so I can grab assets without opening a chat at all.

Verify before you push. I can't stress this enough after the chat-screenshot incident: glance at every capture before committing. File sizes are a cheap signal — when my "Settings" shots jumped from 55KB to 100KB+, I knew the real window was finally in frame.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does it work on Mac or Linux?

Not as-is. Screenshots use Pillow's ImageGrab and recording uses ffmpeg's gdigrab — both Windows-only paths. The ideas transfer, but the scripts would need screencapture/x11grab equivalents.

Does recording capture audio?

No. gdigrab grabs video only. Add voiceover in editing, or pair it with a microphone recorder.

Can it click around the browser by itself?

No — and that's deliberate. The skill captures what you do (or what headless Chrome renders). Scripted clicking is a different tool (Playwright); this skill stays small and dependable.

Two Ways to Write an Article in 2026 (And Why the Best Ones Use Both)

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 13:14:13 +0000

It's almost Midnight. Somewhere, a developer opens a blank tab, types a prompt into an AI, and has a polished 1,200-word article in minutes. Somewhere else, another developer opens the same blank tab, stares at it for forty minutes, deletes three sentences, writes one true one, and finally starts typing for real.

Both of them will hit publish tomorrow. Only one of them will get remembered.

That's the tension I want to talk about, because I think it's the real question hiding under "how do I write a good article" in 2026: not AI or heart — but how you let one serve the other.

Way One: Writing With AI

This is the fast lane, and it's genuinely useful. You bring the idea, the AI helps you:

Breakdown a topic
Draft an outline
Punch up a clunky sentence
Catch the boring paragraph you were too tired to notice
Turn years of scattered learning into one clean explanation

Used well, this isn't cheating. It's what editors have always done for writers — except now everyone has one.

Used badly, though, it produces a very specific kind of article: correct, competent, and completely forgettable. You've read a hundred of them. Perfect grammar. Zero pulse. The kind of post you skim, nod at, and never think about again. The tell is always the same — it sounds like an article about the topic, not like your article about it.

Way Two: Writing With Heart

This is the slow lane. It's you, the actual failure that taught you the lesson, the 2 AM bug that made you want to quit, the moment something finally clicked and you felt like a wizard for ten whole minutes.

Heart-writing isn't about being emotional for its own sake. It's about specificity. It's the difference between:

"Debugging can be frustrating but rewarding."

and:

"I spent three hours debugging our API, convinced the logic was broken. It wasn't. I'd written a nested loop with i and j as counters, and with my eyesight, on a bad-contrast monitor, they were nearly indistinguishable — I kept reading i where I'd written j, and my brain corrected it every single time without telling me. It took a junior dev, glancing over my shoulder for thirty seconds, to spot it. I went home and renamed many variable I owned that night..based on True story😊"

The second one isn't better because it's more honest in some abstract moral sense. It's better because it's true in a way nobody else could have written. That's the whole game. AI can simulate insight. It cannot simulate the specific, embarrassing, real thing that happened to you.

The cost of this path is that it's slower, scarier, and occasionally humbling — because writing with heart means admitting you didn't always know what you were doing.

The Real Answer: They're Not Two Roads. They're Two Hands.

Here's what actually works, and it's the framework underneath most articles you've bookmarked without noticing:

1. Start with the true thing only you have.
Not a topic. A moment. The bug, the mistake, the surprising result, the question a junior dev asked you that you couldn't answer cleanly. This is the part AI cannot do for you, because it doesn't have your Tuesday.

2. Let AI hold the structure while you hold the story.
Once you know what happened, structure is a solved problem — and this is where AI genuinely shines. Ask it to help you outline, to suggest where the piece drags, to find the sentence buried on paragraph nine that should actually be your opening line. Let it be your scaffolding, not your voice.

3. Write the ugly first draft yourself.
Even three rough paragraphs. Even bad ones. This is non-negotiable, and here's why: your voice lives in your word choices under pressure — the slightly weird metaphor, the joke that only makes sense if you know you, the rhythm of how you explain things when you're not trying to sound impressive. AI can polish that voice. It can't originate it from nothing.

4. Use AI as your harshest kind editor, not your ghostwriter.
"Where does this get boring?" "What's the weakest paragraph?" "Is my opening line actually earning the reader's next thirty seconds?" These are incredible questions to ask a model. "Write my article for me" is not — because you'll get back competence with the fingerprints sanded off.

5. Read it out loud before you publish.
This one has nothing to do with AI. It's the oldest trick there is, and it still catches everything: the sentence that's too long, the paragraph that doesn't mean anything, the ending that fizzles instead of lands. If you'd feel embarrassed saying a sentence to a friend, don't publish it.

Why This Actually Matters

Here's the thing nobody tells you about writing on dev.to or Medium in 2026: readers have gotten very good at smelling the difference between a piece written through someone and a piece written by something. Not because AI writing is bad — it isn't — but because readers aren't actually looking for information anymore. They can get information anywhere, instantly, for free. What they're looking for, every time they click on an article instead of asking a chatbot directly, is you. Your particular scar tissue. Your particular way of seeing a problem. The proof that a real person went through something and came back with a flashlight for the rest of us.

That's not a nostalgic argument for doing things the hard way. It's a practical one: the articles that get saved, shared, and remembered are the ones where a real experience got a little help getting dressed for the world — not the ones where an experience was replaced entirely.

So, Start Tonight

Don't open with a prompt. Open with a memory — the bug, the launch that went sideways, the comment on your PR that stung more than it should have, the tiny win nobody else would understand the weight of.

Write that part yourself, badly, honestly.

Then bring in the help.

That's not two ways to write an article in 2026. That's one way, done right — with both hands.

I'm Not a Developer. But I've Spent 10 Years Writing for Them.

Thu, 14 May 2026 13:36:51 +0000

Most Dev's Journey stories start with a first line of code. Mine starts somewhere different.

I came from marketing. And somewhere along the way, I became a technology writer — not because I could build software, but because I was genuinely curious about the people who do.

Over the past 10 years, I've interviewed more than 4,000 IT executives. I've attended several hundred user conferences and press tours. And I've written more than 2,000 articles, blog posts, use cases, and white papers — all focused on one thing: helping developers, engineers, and architects understand new tools and solutions that can make their work simpler and easier.

That's been my job. And honestly, it still feels like the right one.

Why Developers, Engineers, and Architects?

Early in my writing career, I found a home at DZone. It was the go-to destination for technical professionals who wanted to stay current — not just learn how to code, but understand what was new, what was changing, and what was worth paying attention to.

I loved that audience. They're sharp, skeptical, and they don't have time for fluff. If your writing isn't useful, they're gone. That kept me honest.

But DZone evolved. And for a while, I wasn't sure where to find that same engaged, technically-minded community.

Then I found Coder Legion.

What Coder Legion Gets Right

Training and tutorials are valuable. But staying current on new solutions matters just as much. The best developers and engineers I've spoken with over the years are always looking ahead — not just sharpening existing skills, but scanning the horizon for tools that will help them work better and faster.

Coder Legion feels built for that mindset. It's a place where technical professionals can discover what's new, share what they know, and learn from people across the industry — including, apparently, writers like me who spend their days talking to the people building the future.

What I've Learned Along the Way

After 4,000+ interviews and 2,000+ articles, a few things have stuck with me.

The best technology solves real problems. Not hypothetical ones. Not marketing ones. Real ones that slow people down, create friction, or make already-hard jobs harder.

Developers don't want to be sold to. They want to be informed. There's a difference. The articles that perform best aren't the ones with the most superlatives — they're the ones that answer a real question clearly.

The community matters. I've seen technologies rise and fall. What lasts is usually backed by a community of people who believe in it, build on it, and share what they know. That's true of platforms, too.

Why I'm Here

I publish on Coder Legion because the audience is right. These are the people I've been writing for all along — technical professionals who want to know what's new and whether it's worth their time.

I'm not a developer. But I've spent more than a decade trying to make their lives a little easier. And I plan to keep doing it.

Tom Smith is a technology writer and communication strategist who has written more than 2,000 articles covering cybersecurity, AI, and developer tooling. He writes for publications including Coder Legion and Techstrong.

Join The Young Technologist – A Space for Young Minds in Tech!

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 12:54:14 +0000

Join The Young Technologist – A Space for Young Minds in Tech!

Are you passionate about technology? Do you love exploring new ideas, sharing tutorials, or writing about the latest in tech? Then The Young Technologist is the perfect place for you!

Our digital publication is dedicated to young tech enthusiasts who want to learn, create, and inspire. We already have some articles up, but we’re looking to grow our community and feature more voices like yours.

Why contribute?

Share your knowledge with a global audience
Collaborate with other young tech enthusiasts
Build your portfolio and online presence

If you’re interested in writing for The Young Technologist, drop your working email in the comments or DM me. I’ll personally invite you to contribute and get started.

Check out our current articles here: https://youngtechnologist.hashnode.dev/

Let’s build a space where young minds shape the future of technology!

Why AI Won't Replace Novelists: It Will Turn Them Into Creative Directors

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 19:07:01 +0000

Every few months, a headline shows up that rattles the writing world.

"AI writes better than humans." Or the even blunter: "Your career as a novelist is over."

I've read them all. And the first time I fed a chapter outline into an AI tool and watched 800 coherent words appear in under thirty seconds, I felt it too. That cold, unsettling flash of: wait, what just happened?

But after months of working alongside these tools every single day, here's what I know now: that fear gets the story wrong.

Writers aren't being replaced. They're being upgraded. The ones losing ground aren't losing to AI. They're losing to other writers who've figured out how to use it well. That's a very different problem, and it has a very different solution.

The real change is this: the best writers are becoming creative directors of their own stories. The keyboard is still in human hands. The cursor still blinks. But the scope of what one person can build has permanently expanded.

The One-Sentence Takeaway
AI doesn't write your story. You still do. But now you're also the director, the strategist, and the final judge of every word on the page.

1. The Myth: AI Can Replace Human Storytellers

Let's be clear about one thing. AI can write. Sometimes quite well. Give it a genre, a tone, and a rough premise, and it'll produce a structurally solid story with a beginning, middle, and end. That part is real.

But being able to write and being able to tell a story are not the same thing.

Storytelling is how one human mind sends its experience directly into another. The specific grief that sits in your chest after a loss. The color of shame when you've let someone down. The exact way your hometown smells in late July. These aren't data points. They're the slow accumulation of a life being lived. No language model has lived a day.

The research backs this up. A 2024 study on LLMs and narrative quality found that while AI produces structurally complete stories, it consistently struggles with suspense, emotional layering, and character depth. The stories were coherent. They just felt flat.

Separately, research titled Can AI Tell Good Stories? by Haoran Chu and Sixiao Liu looked at how readers actually experience AI-generated narratives. Their finding: AI content could move a plot forward logically, but it failed to create the feeling of being pulled into a world. (Digital Content Next, 2024)

Then there's cultural nuance. A joke that lands in one community falls flat in another. Subtext that charges a scene for one reader is invisible to someone else. AI, trained on patterns across billions of texts, can't reliably operate inside that kind of interpretive specificity. (AI in Screen Trade, 2025)

None of this makes AI useless. It makes AI a powerful tool in the hands of someone who already understands what a story needs. Not a replacement for that understanding.

The One-Sentence Takeaway
AI can produce a story. Only a human can make a reader feel something real inside it.

2. The New Role of the Writer: Creative Director

Here's the analogy that keeps coming back to me. A film director doesn't write every line of dialogue, design every costume, or operate every camera. But the film is unmistakably theirs. Their vision shapes every frame, even the ones they didn't personally touch.

That's exactly where the novelist is headed.

A creative director defines the aesthetic. Sets the emotional tone. Decides what stays and what gets cut. Understands the audience and knows what the work is ultimately for. They don't execute every task. But nothing happens without their judgment.

When I write now, that's how I work. I'm not typing every sentence. Instead, I'm doing the things that only I can do:

Defining the characters: who they are, what they want, what they're
afraid of, what they're lying to themselves about
Building the thematic structure: what does this story actually mean?
What question does it refuse to answer cleanly?
Deciding on voice: is this narrator unreliable? Lyrical? Bluntly
funny? That's a human call. AI follows the direction. It doesn't
create it.
Making the narrative calls: where does a scene land in the arc? What
does this chapter withhold? Where does the reader's trust get tested

A qualitative study by Varanasi et al. (2025) followed 25 professional writers navigating the rise of generative AI. The writers who thrived weren't just better at prompting. They understood how to direct rather than just generate. Their new core skills: prompt engineering, curatorial judgment, and strategic oversight of machine-created content

The creative director model isn't a consolation prize for writers worried about AI. It's a genuine expansion of what a single author can accomplish. And right now, the writers who've embraced it are building a real advantage over everyone still treating the blank page like it's the only way in.

The One-Sentence Takeaway
Your most valuable skill as a writer is no longer generating sentences. It's knowing which sentences matter and why.

3. How AI Supports the Creative Process

Two years ago, I'd spend forty-five minutes staring at a chapter outline, trying to think my way into three good story possibilities. It was slow, grinding work.

Now I describe the story situation to an AI, ask for six different directions the scene could go, and get them in ninety seconds. Then I spend the same forty-five minutes actually evaluating those options. That's the interesting part. That's always been the interesting part. I just couldn't get there as fast before.

That shift from generation to curation is showing up across the whole industry. Adobe's 2024 Creative Frontier study surveyed over 2,000 creative professionals and found that 90% say generative AI saves time and improves brainstorming. That number surprised even me when I first read it.

Here's where AI genuinely moves the needle for writers:

Brainstorming at scale: generate twenty plot variations in minutes.
You'll cut eighteen. But the two that survive might be the best ideas
in your draft.
Character development: build out secondary characters, backstories,
speech rhythms. AI helps you triangulate who someone is from multiple
angles, fast.
Rough scene drafts: give AI the emotional beats you need and let it
produce a rough version. You'll rewrite most of it. But reacting to
something on the page is quicker than writing into nothing.
Research compression: need the social fabric of 1920s Chicago for
your historical novel? AI can turn hours of research into a usable
briefing note.
Chapter outlining: sketch the narrative spine of an entire book
quickly, then interrogate it scene by scene for emotional logic.

MIT Sloan research (2025) found that writers using AI tools spend 30% less time and produce up to 50% more content. For a novelist, that could mean finishing a first draft in six months instead of twelve. Then using the other six months to actually make it good.

But efficiency isn't the real prize. The real prize is creative range. AI lets you test ideas that you'd have abandoned before because the cost of exploring them was too high. The terrifying story that needed research you didn't have time for? Now you can try it. The character who lives in a world completely unlike your own? Now you can draft them and see if they hold.

The One-Sentence Takeaway
AI gives you back the hours you used to spend on scaffolding, so you can spend more time on the story that lives inside it.

4. Why Human Editing Is Still the Heart of Great Fiction

Here's something I've noticed about every AI-assisted draft I've worked on. They're never quite right. Not wrong, exactly. Just slightly off in a way that's hard to name until you're deep into the revision.

The pacing is technically sound but doesn't breathe. The emotion is labeled instead of felt. The dialogue moves the plot forward but lacks the underground tension that makes a scene actually crackle.

That gap between what AI generates and what great fiction actually is? That's the writer's whole job now. And if anything, I'd argue it's become more demanding and more interesting.

A 2025 Reuters survey found that 71% of publishers say AI drafts still need major editing before publication. More striking: human-edited AI content gets 16% higher engagement than purely human-written content. The combination, done well, outperforms either one alone.

What does that editing actually look like in practice? It's everything that separates a novel from a plot summary rendered in sentences:

Voice: AI defaults to polished, slightly generic prose. Your voice is
the specific rhythm of your sentences, your instincts about what to
name and what to leave unspoken. That's what makes a reader feel a
real consciousness behind the words.
Pacing: knowing when to slow down, when to accelerate, when to let
silence do the work. This is felt, not calculated. It comes from
understanding how a reader's attention actually moves.
Emotional arcs: the internal logic of why a character changes and
what it costs them requires psychological specificity that AI
consistently flattens. Rebuilding that depth is the core editorial
task.
Narrative consistency: AI forgets things across long texts. A detail
you planted in chapter two that should echo in chapter nine? That's
yours to track, honor, and make pay off.

In my experience, revising an AI-assisted draft is actually more engaging than writing from scratch. The structural problems are already roughed out. What remains are the human problems: the truth of a moment, the rightness of a word, the emotional weight of a scene that needs to land. Those are the only problems worth solving in fiction anyway.

The One-Sentence Takeaway
The raw AI draft is just the beginning. The writer's job is to find the story hiding inside it.

5. The Future of AI-Assisted Storytelling

What happens next? Honestly, we can't know everything. But the shape of the next several years is already becoming clear.

Speed is the most immediate shift. A 2025 LinkedIn publishing industry report documented major publishing houses cutting manuscript production time by 25% using AI tools, without sacrificing editorial quality. For independent authors and small presses, that kind of compression is genuinely transformative.

Beyond speed, new story forms are emerging. Interactive fiction that responds to reader choices in real time, shaped by AI and guided by a human author, is already thriving in gaming. It's now migrating toward literary fiction too. A 2024 study on multi-agent AI storytelling showed AI generating interactive children's stories combining voice and animation in forms that simply didn't exist five years ago.

There's also a democratization effect worth noting. Research from 360info suggests we're entering a creative renaissance where faster production leads to broader experimentation. Not just more volume. More diverse voices actually reaching publication.

And the income data is already shifting. More than 60% of freelance writers now use AI in their work. Writers who know how to direct AI toward specific human outcomes are commanding premium rates. Those who use it as a basic text generator are competing on price against the machine itself. That gap is growing fast.

The writers who'll shape the next literary era won't be the ones who refused AI on principle. And they won't be the ones who handed their imagination to it entirely. They'll be the ones who figured out how to use it the way a strong director uses a talented crew: with clear vision, sharp judgment, and no doubt about whose story it really is.

The One-Sentence Takeaway
The writers building skills in AI direction right now are becoming the early adopters of a whole new creative era.

The Amplification, Not the Replacement

The fear that AI will replace novelists assumes that what novelists do is produce sentences. But that's like saying a conductor's job is to wave a stick.

What writers actually do is translate a specific human consciousness, shaped by experience and loss and love and failure, into a form that can live inside another person's mind. AI cannot do that. What it can do is handle the generative load: the brainstorming, the rough drafting, the structural experimentation that used to eat so much of a writer's finite hours.

A PwC analysis found that hybrid human-AI teams can boost productivity and output speed by 50%. In storytelling terms, that's not fifty percent more words. It's fifty percent more time for the work only a human can do.

I still sit down every morning with a story I'm trying to tell. I still feel the difficulty of finding the sentence that's honest and precise and rhythmically right all at once. What's different now is that I'm spending less time on the scaffolding. And more time on the thing the scaffolding is actually for.

The most powerful storytellers of the future won't reject AI and they won't surrender to it. They'll direct it. They'll bring the vision, the lived truth, and the final judgment about what a story means. They'll let AI do the heavy lifting. And then they'll take everything AI produced and turn it into something that could only have come from them.

That's not a diminished version of being a writer. It might be the most fully realized version we've ever had.

The One-Sentence Takeaway
The future belongs to writers who learn to direct AI like a creative partner, not compete with it like a rival.

References for how to use AI for writing:

Medium vs DEV vs Hashnode vs Hackernoon vs CoderLegion — Where Should You Publish & Launch?

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 14:57:47 +0000

Medium vs DEV vs Hashnode vs Hackernoon vs CoderLegion — Where Should You Publish & Launch?

#webdev #opensource #productivity #techwriting #discuss

In the past few months, I’ve spoken with many developers, indie founders, and open-source maintainers. Almost everyone eventually asks the same question:

“Which platform is the best for posting my articles?”

It’s a reasonable question — but it’s not the most important question.

The question we should be asking is:

**Where should I launch my content?**

Posting and launching are not the same:

Posting = publishing content for long-term visibility and SEO
Launching = pushing something new with traffic and momentum

Start From Your Own Blog

If you’re building a product, writing regularly, or growing an audience, the most important foundation is your own blog or website, where you control content, SEO, identity, and long-term value.

A personal or product blog helps:

Developers who want to learn more about you
People searching for solutions through Google
Building your credibility and authority over time

External platforms should support your blog — not replace it.

✨ The ideal content strategy:

Write on your blog → Republish everywhere with a canonical link

This gives you:

SEO ownership
Distribution advantage
Multiple traffic sources

Why Publish on External Platforms?

Because:

Most people don’t yet know you
SEO takes months to grow
Competition is intense
Traffic platforms help you reach new audiences instantly

Large platforms function like marketplaces — if your article gains traction, they push it heavily.

So instead of choosing one platform… use all of them.

Where Should You Launch? Platform-by-Platform Breakdown

Medium

Medium has one of the biggest tech-interested audiences on the internet. Trend once, and you can get tens of thousands of readers. But breaking in is difficult.

Best approach

Publish regularly
Join large publications (e.g., JavaScript in Plain English, Bits & Pieces)
Build followers slowly
Use existing audience (newsletter, courses, social) to push traffic

Once you have momentum, launching on Medium becomes powerful.

DEV Community

DEV is one of the easiest places to trend and build an audience quickly.

Strengths

Young algorithm → easier to get visibility
Highly engaged community
Strong junior & JavaScript audience
Articles can reach 100k+ views with minimal marketing

DEV is excellent for launching something new because it rewards early engagement.

Hashnode

Hashnode is a network of personal blogs supported by a global feed.

Pros

Rapid feature development
Supportive platform owners
Clean writing experience

Cons

Traffic doesn’t circulate well (readers stay inside the personal blog)
Being featured often brings smaller traffic compared to DEV

Good for long-term writing, but not ideal for launches right now.

Hackernoon

Hackernoon focuses on narrative, editorial-style content and requires review/approval.

Pros

Interesting storytelling audience
Some brand credibility

Cons

Slower publishing process
Weak UX and complex interface
Mixed traffic results

Better for story-based content, not rapid growth.

CoderLegion.com ✨ — Platform Focused on Developers, Launches & Community

A fast-growing platform designed specifically for developers, indie makers, open-source creators, and tech bloggers.

Unlike larger saturated platforms, CoderLegion gives early visibility and community interaction, making it great for launching something new.

Launches Page

CoderLegion includes a dedicated Launches section where people announce:

New products / open-source libraries
Framework releases
Startup updates
Event announcements
Build-in-public milestones

Perfect for developers who want visibility without fighting huge platform competition.

Launching here gives you:

Focused exposure to real builders
Traffic boost to your blog or product
Better chance to trend early

Groups

Users can join groups by:

Languages (Python, JS, Go, Rust, etc.)
Frameworks (React, Angular, Laravel, Django, etc.)
Regions
Interests

Groups allow:

Discussions
Questions & collaboration
Sharing new launches
Community-level distribution of articles

This means your post doesn’t sit alone — users can discuss and amplify it.

✨ Additional CoderLegion Features

Feature	Value
Canonical article support	Safe republishing from your blog
Follow system	Grow your audience directly
Points & badges	Motivation & gamification
Like / Love reactions	Helps trending
Messaging	Connect with other developers
Job board	Developer-focused opportunities
Community engagement	Real retention, not passive reading

This feels like the early days of DEV — easier to grow and be seen.

Join & publish: https://coderlegion.com

So, Which Platform Should You Use?

All of them — but strategically.

Goal	Best Launch Platform	Why
Fastest traction	CoderLegion / DEV	Easier trending, stronger push
Long-term visibility	Your blog + Medium	SEO & steady growth
Advanced writing / storytelling	Hackernoon	Editorial style
Passive secondary distribution	Hashnode	Supplemental

Final Strategy

Write on your own blog
Launch first on CoderLegion or DEV
Republish on Medium, Hashnode, Hackernoon
Drive traffic from social & newsletter
Use canonical links everywhere

Final Thought

The problem isn’t choosing a single platform.
The right approach is:

Publish everywhere. Launch where momentum is easiest.

Today, the best launch platforms are CoderLegion & DEV
Medium becomes powerful once you already have traction

Where do you usually publish your articles?

Would love to hear your experience in the comments.

Getting Started with Technical Writing: A Beginners Guide

Mon, 24 Mar 2025 21:09:47 +0000

Getting Started with Technical Writing: A Beginners Guide

Have you ever been confused about a technical concept and then stumbled across a blog or article that broke it down so simply that it felt like the author was explaining it directly to you? That article was likely written by a Technical Writer.

Technical writing has become crucial across various sectors and fields as it helps companies and teams effectively communicate and share information with their customers or audience. Without clear communication, businesses risk creating a disconnect with their audience—a gap that can ultimately lead to their downfall.

In this article, you will learn more about what technical writing entails and why it is important. In the end, I will also show you things you should know about being a technical writer.

Let's dive right in.

Outline

What is Technical Writing
Applications of Technical Writing
Key Characteristics of Technical Writing
Types of Technical Documents
The Technical Writing Process
Conclusion

What is Technical Writing?

I know you might be asking, "What is technical writing?" So, before we go deeper, let's examine what technical writing is all about.

In technical writing, you break complex information down into simpler, more easily understandable documents. This helps your audience understand and use the tool, programming language, or concept you’re writing about. So technical writing is all about breaking down complex ideas into smaller, understandable chunks.

It’s also important to note that the people who break down this complex information in this way are referred to as technical writers. Now that we’ve gotten this out of the way, let's move on.

Applications of Technical Writing

Now you might be thinking that technical writing is only for people in tech, but that’s not the case. Though it has been traditionally used most often in tech, it’s becoming common in other fields as well.

Below are various fields where technical writing can be super helpful, along with some use cases:

1 Information Technology: Though the tech space is very vast, technical writing can be used for:

Writing product or framework documentation for beginners, mid-level, and senior personnel.
Writing How-to guides
Writing UI docx to help people navigate a product

2 Health Field: Shocking as it may seem, technical writing is also applied in this field. Here are some places it can be applied:

Creating documentation for healthcare software.
Writing how-to guides for manuals for medical devices or equipment.
Producing regulatory and educational documents for both patients and staff.

3 Finance and Banking: Technical writers are also found in the finance and banking sectors. Here are some of their tasks:

Creating training manuals and developing user-friendly guides for services or financial products.
Creating regulatory documents for both staff and customers.

4 Aerospace and Defense: Here are some common tasks for technical writers in this field:

Preparing reports and compliance documents for regulatory bodies.
Creating detailed how-to manuals or guides on how an aircraft or defence system functions.
Writing/creating safety protocols for staff to abide by.

These are a few areas where technical writing has become quite common. But trust me, there are many more fields where it can be applied.

At this point we are done with the surface of what technical writing is and its importance. Now let’s go further to see the characteristics of a technical writer.

Key Characteristics of Technical Writing

To write a technical document, there are three important things you have to keep in mind:

Clarity and conciseness: When it comes to writing documentation, one of the things you should think about is how clear and straightforward the content is. It's best to read and reread it to make sure it’s very easy to understand and that some unnecessary words are filtered out of the documentation.
Audience awareness: Your audience should be one of your top priorities when writing a technical document. It’s essential to identify who they are, their level of education, and what they hope to gain from reading your document. By understanding these factors, you’ll be better equipped to address their needs and solve their problems effectively.
Use of visuals and formatting: Adding visuals can significantly enhance the reader's understanding of your technical document. For instance, if a reader initially grasps only 40% of the content, a well-designed visual (like charts or diagrams) could increase their comprehension to around 90%. Additionally, how your document is formatted is crucial in providing clarity. Proper formatting can maximize the reader's understanding, potentially reaching 100%. This ensures that the reader achieves the purpose of consulting your technical documentation in the first place.

Types of Technical Documents

Just as we previously talked about various fields where technical writing can be applied, you should know that there are various types of technical documents needed in these fields. Below are the most commonly used documents across all fields:

User Manuals and User Guides: These are practical guides designed to help users understand how a product works or how to navigate processes within an organization. They can include step-by-step instructions or serve as a reference for regulations and best practices.
Reports and Proposals: Reports are written to share findings, provide analysis, or give updates on a specific task or decision. They are widely used in organizations, regardless of size, to communicate important information. Proposals, however, are meant to persuade or convince others to support or approve a project or plan.
Documentation: Documentation, just as it sounds, helps users understand and use a product. It provides detailed solutions to possible problems that could be encountered by a user.

The Technical Writing Process

As promised, here are things you need to know as a technical writer. Before you think of writing a technical document, it is important that you know the three stages of writing, and they are:

Pre-Writing Stage
Writing Stage
Post Writing Stage

Pre-Writing Stage

The pre-writing stage is a very important stage in writing, as it takes up the major part of your technical writing process, which is the topic research, information gathering of the agreed topic, etc.

Here are things to consider in the pre-writing stage.

Audience and purpose: This is where you consider who the audience/readers you are writing to are, what their educational background is, and also what issue you are trying to solve for them by writing the document.
Tone and style: After you have figured out the basic/important information about your target audience, the next thing for you to consider is how you can present your technical document to them for them to understand. In most cases, your target audience might be the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) or Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of a large firm/organization, so by identifying them, you should be able to write in a tone and style that resonates with them.
Gathering of Information: This is the point where you do proper research about the information you want to write about. For example, if you want to write a “How-to” manual for a specific product, you must have done deep research about the product or, if possible, used the product for a while; this will give you enough evidence/facts to write about that product effectively.
Outlining: At this point, you’ve figured out who your target audience is, you’ve figured out the tone and style to write to them, and you’ve also gathered enough information on the topic you want to write about. An outline makes the remaining process easy for you. Outlining is more like a guide; it shows you what to do at a particular point, and it also helps in the proper formatting of your technical document.

Writing Stage

This is the phase where the actual writing takes place. During this stage, three key aspects are considered:

The main content or body of the technical document
The development of Paragraphs within the document
Ensuring coherence and adherence to genre conventions.

Post-Writing Stage

This is the final phase of the writing process, where you focus on:

Assessing the quality and organization of your content.
Ensuring grammatical accuracy.
Thoroughly editing your manuscript
Conducting proofreading and seeking peer reviews of your work.

Conclusion

At this point, you can see how important technical writing is and how it closes the huge gap between companies and their audience/customers.

As an individual, getting a technical writing skill is an added advantage to you because of how important it is in our day-to-day lives.

Thanks for reading, and peace.

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