Exploring Technical Writing: The First Post on Medium

This post is an excerpt from my upcoming book “Exploring Technical Writing”.

You can pre-order the book at 50% discount — https://rudrank.gumroad.com/l/technical-writing/pre-order

“I write to discover what I know.” — Flannery O’Connor

Have you ever had an idea late at night that would not let you sleep, and you just did not know where to share it? Back in 2019, I came across a new framework introduced by Apple called Combine. It intrigued me, and I decided to learn more by picking up a book. Little did I know that this decision would lead me to an idea for my first post on Medium.

Discovering the Gap in SwiftUI

Around the same time in 2019, Apple also introduced another framework called SwiftUI, which allowed for declarative development for Apple platforms. However, as it was in the initial stages, something was missing from the framework. It lacked a native view for creating grid layouts with multiple rows and columns. This sparked an idea while reading about the Combine framework late at night.

Innovative Solution Using Combine

I thought of using two loops to create the desired layout while emitting values through the stream. To simplify, imagine you have a photo album with spaces for pairs of photos. You have six pictures of landscapes: mountains, beaches, forests, deserts, lakes, and valleys. You want to arrange them in the album so that every page shows two landscapes side by side:

Mountains | Beaches

Forests | Deserts

Lakes | Valleys

That is what I aimed to do, using the Combine framework. It seemed like a breakthrough, and I wanted to share it with others. However, when I searched the internet for similar approaches, I could not find any content related to it. I was amazed because no one else seemed to have this idea?

This led me to the dilemma of where to post my idea and the solution. I did not have a blog or want to invest in a domain. After using WordPress before, it was not the option I was looking for either. That is when I discovered Medium.com.

From Idea to Validation

I saw popular developers posting on Medium and gaining recognition, which motivated me to choose it as the platform for my first post. I wanted to share my idea and hopefully receive some claps as validation (haha!) and engagement from the community.

So, I went about writing my first post on Medium! I started with “Playing With Combine: Grid Layout in SwiftUI”, creating a playful but not click-bait title. At that time, the developers working with SwiftUI knew about the absence of a grid layout; for them, it was an instant click.

In the introduction, I briefly explained the context of my idea and how it came about. I mentioned Combine and SwiftUI and the lack of a native grid view in the framework.

Next, I explained my idea of using two loops to create the grid layout. I provided step-by-step instructions and code snippets to demonstrate implementing this solution in SwiftUI.

After explaining the solution, I shared the results, including the screenshots or images to visually showcase the grid layout created with multiple rows and columns.

Writing the first post on Medium over a night was nerve-wracking. I was too excited to share my idea and implementation as if I achieved the fusion of some nuclear elements. And people loved it! I went back to check the statistics, and the post has almost twenty thousand views and 830 claps over four years! Half of the views are from Google, meaning Medium’s strong domain authority did its magic.

This experience taught me that sometimes the best ideas come when you least expect them. Sharing my opinion on Medium and seeing it resonate with many people boosted my confidence. The initial writing success motivated me to explore, learn, and share more in the future!