--- title: Blog about things you don't understand yet | daily.dev description: A personal essay on why the author writes blog posts about topics he doesn't yet fully understand, arguing that taking a controversial, defensible position... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/blog-about-things-you-don-t-understand-yet-sm9gpxotz twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Blog about things you don't understand yet | daily.dev og:description: A personal essay on why the author writes blog posts about topics he doesn't yet fully understand, arguing that taking a controversial, defensible position... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/blog-about-things-you-don-t-understand-yet-sm9gpxotz og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/sM9GpXOtz.png og:image:alt: Blog about things you don't understand yet og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Blog about things you don't understand yet **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 8 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A personal essay on why the author writes blog posts about topics he doesn't yet fully understand, arguing that taking a controversial, defensible position forces deeper research and clearer thinking. He describes writing as a thinking tool, addresses the ethics of writing as a non-expert, and recommends getting feedback from readers or even LLMs, noting OpenAI models tend to over-hedge but are still useful for catching genuine misunderstandings. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 2 discussions and 62 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-08-14). **TL;DR:** Discussion centers on writing-as-thinking-tool as a genuine learning method, with substantial pushback on whether talking/discussion or AI assistance can substitute, and concern about being upfront when publishing half-formed understanding. **Sentiment:** 40% positive · 50% mixed · 10% skeptical **The case for** - Writing forces you to organize thoughts into a coherent structure in a way loose discussion doesn't. - Having an LLM poke holes in your own draft is like a spotter, useful for catching gaps without doing the thinking for you. - Being transparent about one's learning journey and credentials makes this kind of blogging fine and even valuable. **The pushback** - Some argue live discussion/argument is a superior learning method compared to solitary writing. - Publishing while not an expert risks spreading misinformation if the writer isn't upfront about their lack of expertise. - One commenter worries such posts could degrade the quality of LLM training data. - Several noted the web is increasingly bot traffic, questioning whether publishing is worth it if humans won't read it. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Extended back-and-forth about whether writing or discussion better builds understanding, with general sympathy for the post's premise but real pushback on its self-aggrandizing framing and on the ethics of publishing half-baked takes. **Hottest debate:** Whether writing alone is genuinely superior to conversation/discussion for building true understanding of a topic. **Open questions** - Does inviting reader feedback meaningfully reduce the harm of publishing incomplete understanding? - How should writers balance approachability versus technical depth when venturing into less familiar territory? **Highlights** > One of the best ways to clarify your thoughts about a subject is to write about it, and one of the best ways to prove to yourself that you understand it is to be able to write about it clearly. Indeed, my primary motivation to write is to order my thoughts and better understand the universe I live in. It is surprisingly difficult work, but so is lifting weights. That is precisely why I insist on doing it myself. If I let an AI write for me, it would be the same as letting a robot lift weights for me. Yeah, it would be easier, but I would not get stronger, nor would I gain the confidence and self discipline that comes from doing hard things. > — [tmoertel on hackernews · 3 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49293934) > I think a better way to understand is talk and discuss it rather than just write about it. AI can be useful for this, like instead of it lifting for you, it is holding the punching bag instead in your metaphor. Yes, writing clearly makes you understand your thoughts etc. But it is one of the methods and we shouldn't extraploate how much a person understands things based on whether they write or not. Arguments and discussions are still superior form of learning to me than just purely writing and thinking. > — [altmanaltman on hackernews · 3 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49294410) > Please, no. Don't blog about things you don't understand yet. We have far too many people and LLMs doing that. After you really understand it, then consider blogging. > — [Animats on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49294647) > The author states: > every single one of my blog posts argues a point. I never publish a post that just gives some scattered thoughts on a topic, or a post that only says “yes, I agree with this other article”. What’s wrong with posting about something interesting about the world you have discovered without arguing any point? The author seems to argue that polemics are the only valid form of writing. Even for a polemicist that seems a bit self aggrandizing. > — [MarkSweep on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49294661) > I also write a lot about things I learn and not always fully understand yet. My secret worry is that one of my readers will meet me in person and quiz me verbally on the subjects of one of my articles. I would end up sounding really dumb compared to the impression made by the article! When it comes to pretending to know something about things you don't understand, I think there's a big difference between talking and writing. Talking is bad because you're not equipped to form intelligent off-the-cuff sentences about the thing. But writing can be okay, if done with care. Some things I would be able to talk about because I have insense opinions enough to remember (e.g. insurance purchasing decision logic), or they are easy to remember (the alpha-max plus beta-min algorithm), or I wrote about them recently enough to remember (how to perform an FFT). But ask me about anything else (sloppy confidence intervals for Pearson correlations?) and I'd just stand there. > — [kqr on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49294823) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49293087) · 93 points · 62 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48814845) · 3 points · 0 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Post your Prompts](https://daily.dev/posts/post-your-prompts-il25p9gz2) · RUBYLAND · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Now's The Time To Start That Blog](https://daily.dev/posts/now-s-the-time-to-start-that-blog-0zfa3uvah) · Matthias Endler · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [It's insulting to read your AI-generated blog post](https://daily.dev/posts/it-s-insulting-to-read-your-ai-generated-blog-post-xbsfrgwnq) · Hacker News · 6 upvotes · 2 comments - [Where I try to write daily](https://daily.dev/posts/where-i-try-to-write-daily-054bblzwj) · Ibrahim Diallo · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Coming up with blog topics](https://daily.dev/posts/coming-up-with-blog-topics-aocw14zsd) · Cassidy's blog · 5 upvotes · 2 comments --- Tags: [#llm](https://daily.dev/tags/llm) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/blog-about-things-you-don-t-understand-yet-sm9gpxotz) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Blog about things you don't understand yet","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/blog-about-things-you-don-t-understand-yet-sm9gpxotz","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/blog-about-things-you-don-t-understand-yet-sm9gpxotz"},"datePublished":"2026-08-14T04:17:28.352Z","dateModified":"2026-08-14T08:26:12.852Z","description":"A personal essay on why the author writes blog posts about topics he doesn't yet fully understand, arguing that taking a controversial, defensible position...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/479e95ee2af112c350fa09a341f0c630?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/479e95ee2af112c350fa09a341f0c630?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/blog-about-things-you-don-t-understand-yet-sm9gpxotz","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"llm","timeRequired":"PT8M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Blog about things you don't understand yet"}]} ```