Creating a TIL (Today I Learned) website to keep track of things I learn

Visit my TIL site here.

I was inspired by this tweet from Simon Willison to build my own TIL webpage for tracking things I learn.

The best thing about a career in tech is that you never run out of new things to learn! I've been trying to learn in public more to help emphasize this, hence https://t.co/asPNTK0Ri0

— Simon Willison (@simonw) October 2, 2020

I really enjoy learning, and like Simon, one thing I like about tech and coding is that there is always more to learn. For me, building this TIL site will accomplish several goals.

First, it will help to solidify the things I learn. Too often, I will read how to do something in a Stack Overflow post, tutorial or blog post, copy and paste the solution to my code, and move on. Usually this accomplishes the goal of solving the problem I’m working on, but the solution doesn’t stick in my head. The next time I run into the same problem, I’ll need to Google for that same Stack Overflow post. I’m hoping that by writing out a brief explanation of the problem and its solution myself, I’ll be more likely to remember for the next time I need it.

Second, it will serve as a useful reference page for me. I won’t remember the details of everything I add to the page, but by creating TIL entries, I’ll be building up a collection of useful mini-tutorials. I can quickly and easily come back to the page to read my own tutorial and teach myself what I forgot.

Third, it will act as a journal of my progress. Over time, as I continue to learn more things, it will be useful to have a record of what I was learning when. When I’m working on projects at work, I can’t share them publicly, but I can still keep a public record of general skills and tools that I picked up while working on them. It will also be nice to be able to look back and see how far I’ve come.

Finally, building the site will be practice for basic web development, version control, and CI/CD with GitHub Actions.