One of the best ways to learn Programming is to Blog

I think people don’t want to blog is because they’re worried about taking time away from coding. But that's not true! Here are a few reasons why blogging is actually a very helpful way to learning coding.

• Forces in Depth Research - if you start writing about fundamental topics, such as Python’s OOP, it’ll require you to research that topic vigorously. This results in you reading multiple blog posts, book chapters, and lots of code. I doubt many people will read such post, but now I truly understand how to use it and even better I use that post as a quick reference when coding.
• Forces Practice - if you really want to grasp something well enough to blog about it, you need to practice using it i.e. you need to code.
• Forces Reflection - For one of my personal projects I blogged about each milestone I reached. For instance if I added a Command Line Interface to my app I blogged about it. This meant I had to go back through my code and reflect on why I wrote it that way. You should be doing this anyways but blogging about it forced me to really scrutinize my code, highlighted errors, and always left me with improved knowledge and skills.
• Creates References - I already mentioned this in #1 but I think it warrants its own spot in this list. Once you’ve written a post on a topic you can refer back to it anytime. This reduces time spent brushing up on a topic because you know exactly where to find your post.
• Creates a Timeline of Your Progress - by blogging consistently while you’re learning to program, you’re chronicling the evolution of your skills. Seeing my progress from post to post has been incredibly rewarding and keeps me motivated. I’ve also been told that potential employers like to see this as well, so if a side effect is it helps me/you get a job, SWEET!