John: Hey, John Sonmez from simpleprogrammer.com.
I’ve got another interview here.
We’re with Arne Mertz.
Am I saying it right, Arne Mertz?
Arne Mertz: Arne Mertz, yeah.
John: Arne, okay, Arne.
Okay, Arne.
Anyway, Arne has been sending me some emails and I’ve been watching his progress as he’s
grown his blog very specialized in C++ theme.
It’s been amazing to see the growth of Arne’s blog over time so I thought I would share
that with you guys out there and just share his perspective because I think hearing someone
who’s done it especially in this time frame, I think, if I remember correctly, it’s been
about a year, has it been?
Arne Mertz: Yes, a year and 2 weeks old, so yeah.
John: Wow, so yeah.
We’ll get into your stats in a little bit here, but before I do I want to thank you
for taking the time to share your experience and welcome you.
Arne Mertz: Thanks for having me.
John: Why don’t you tell a little bit about yourself, kind of your background, where you’re
from, what you do and then we’ll discuss what you’ve been able to do with your blog?
Arne Mertz: Yeah, okay.
I’m from Germany.
My parents both are mathematicians and focus on IT so I kind of have that background with
family.
I started real early with programming, I think at the age of 10 or 12 with Pascal and later
during my studies I learned C++.
I studied physics and well actually I was already _______ [00:01:56] I was kind of thinking
not to do more physics because I kind of liked programming so I tried to get a job in IT
and got lucky to get one without any reference, without any references and started doing more
C++ on the job and I kind of—it was fun for me.
I read many books about C++ and Clean Code and after a while I got an idea to write a
blog about those 2 themes together.
John: Yeah, okay.
Your blog is called Simplify C++ correct?
Arne Mertz: Yes.
John: What—this was about a year ago that you started and now how many visitors—you’re
telling me you’re getting how many visitors a day on your blog?
Arne Mertz: It’s very different; it depends on the blog post.
Some get linked on Reddit.
I think the record was about 20,000 in one day but this was really high—a controversial
blog post about I think clean code versus performance, but I don’t know the average.
I think in the one year I got about 200,000 visitors.
John: Wow, wow.
Okay, yeah.
I think it—I was looking at your—like your total visitors and I’m seeing 224,193.
Yeah, that’s in one year of just starting the blog.
That’s pretty amazing.
That’s pretty awesome to see that kind of growth.
What do you think it was?
Where did you start out and how did you achieve that level of success that quickly because
a lot of people don’t reach that?
Maybe you don’t know the exact factors, but what were you doing that-?
Arne Mertz: I think the most important factor was that I got in contact with Meeting C++
which is a guy who makes kind of a conference, a yearly conference about C++ in Europe and
also helps people organize and organizes himself user groups in different cities in Germany
and Europe and he has a blogroll and a huge Twitter audience and he shared those first
links to my first blog post.
Actually it’s just better every week whenever I write something about C++ so I think by
those referrals I got a lot of traffic to my site.
John: Okay, okay.
What gave you the idea to reach out to this person?
Arne Mertz: Actually I knew him before.
We had some loose contact on Twitter and on Facebook.
I knew him from C++ forum I was attending in 2008, 2009 more or less.
I already have that contact and just reached out and told him, “I started a blog, are
you interested in sharing it?”
He did and it really took off really good.
John: Okay, okay, yeah.
I mean that’s great because it’s a simple solution to—I think a lot of people don’t
reach out.
Maybe they’re afraid or they think that—I mean did you think when you reach out to him
that he would say it?
Did you have apprehension about—that he would share it or were you nervous about that
or did you just think that he would or?
Arne Mertz: Not really, I have seen him linked on blogs before so I thought, “Why not ask
him?”
He just did, link the blogs.
John: Okay, okay.
How did having the blog benefit you or has it benefited you so far?
I mean there’s a lot of people that still think that programmers think, “Oh, having
a blog isn’t really going to help me much in my career.”
Arne Mertz: Actually I think it’s partly at least it got me a new job.
I switched jobs in October so—when I sent my CV I put in there I was active at stack
overflow, I had the blog and the blog was one of the first topics they asked me about.
John: Yeah.
Arne Mertz: Yeah, I think it wasn’t—yes, it made a difference.
John: What about the writing?
Do you feel that writing your thoughts, sharing them with other people, do you feel that it
helps you grow professionally?
What kind of impression do you get from that?
Arne Mertz: Yes, I think so.
It makes me reflect on my thoughts.
I get feedback from other people who say that mainly my view isn’t so—so the general
view is only because of my experience because my background is C++ with Enterprise and Lexico
and other people are doing C++ Embedded so it’s a different world for them so they
not always agree with my blog posts but I think it’s very good to have those different
opinions about the language, different points of view.
John: Right, yeah, yeah, I totally agree.
It’s interesting how when you create a blog and then suddenly your world expands because
you realize all these other people that you wouldn’t have connected with that have totally
different view points.
I guess, you know, one thing I’d be curious about is if—I’m always trying to encourage
everyone out there, developers, to take the steps.
I mean you took steps that really, it sounds like to me, improved your career and really—I
mean this is just the beginning knowing that you’ve gotten this much traction this far.
What would you say to someone who wants to—who’s sort of on the fence?
They want to start a blog, they want to start improving their career, they want to get to
the next level but they’re not sure.
What kind of steps would you encourage them to get there?
Arne Mertz: I think one just has to stop hesitating and just start it.
Once you have written your first 2 or 3 posts, once you’ve got it rolling just continue.
There are times after a while where I have to stick to it because I think first of all
4 or 5 months after I started the blog I started thinking about—I didn’t know what to write
about anymore because my deck log was empty and it was a rather hard time to get new ideas
about what to write about.
My goal was to write about one post per week and I tried to get insights from colleagues,
even _______[00:10:04] what I could write about so it was—the hard time was I think
about 4 or 5 weeks where I really didn’t know what to write about and after that it
got rolling again.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I’m glad that you made it through that dip because that—I mean a lot of bloggers struggle
with that.
There’s always going to be that dry spell.
If you can push through that then you’ll find that there’s more content on the other
side.
What about—I was going to ask about the confident like when I got your email or well
as I’ve been reading your emails I feel like your confidence has increased, is that
true?
Do you feel that way like your confidence in your ability?
Arne Mertz: Yes, yes, I think so.
In the beginning I didn’t know who would read the blog, what the opinions of people
would be and I got really much positive feedback so this really gave me the confidence to go
on and to keep on blogging, yep.
John: Great, okay.
Well, I want to make sure that we give everyone—that they check out your blog especially C++ is—I
think for a lot of people it’s a difficult topic.
I really like the concept of simplifying it that you’re doing.
For everyone listening or watching you can go to arne-mertz.de so that’s arne-mertz.de
and you can get to Arne’s blog which is Simplify C++.
Anything else?
What’s next for you?
Where do you see going from here now?
What’s your next goal?
Arne Mertz: I’m not sure.
I’m thinking about submitting talks to one or the other conference.
For example Meeting C++ is in November this year in Berlin again.
I was thinking about submitting a talk to that conference and 3 days ago I got an email
on the _______[00:12:34] version of LinkedIn, it’s called ____.
I’m organizing a conference about Clean Code here in Germany and they asked me to
submit a—if I have the time and if I wanted to submit a talk so that’s going to be the
next stuff for me I think.
John: Great, yeah, I think that’s perfect, yeah.
I think you should have an easy time getting accepted to conferences now having really
a quite popular C++ blog and a good one.
I’ve been reading some of your articles and they are very good.
Arne Mertz: Thanks.
John: One last thing, I should have asked this at the beginning but I just realized
I didn’t ask, what started you?
What made you decide to do this to shift this direction?
Because you said—how long—you have been writing software for, I mean, you said since
you were 10 I think.
Arne Mertz: Yeah, yeah.
John: What motivated you to finally make the—to do a blog and to get out there in the community?
Arne Mertz: I think there were about 2 factors—no, 3 factors.
I had written a few blog posts for other people about C++ about Clean Code in early 2014 I
think and—or installed the blogging itself on _____[00:14:04] but didn’t start blogging
at all.
Then we had a few C++ topics at work and some of my colleagues told me about could you write
it down for us so we don’t always have to look them up on the web and/or ask and I wrote
about 2 or 3 Wiki articles in our internal Wiki and at the same time I was reading your
book and I thought, “If I’m writing it down already why not start a blog?”
John: Okay, okay.
Actually I’ve got to ask you one more question here and then I guess we should probably wrap
it up which is how do you write so well being a non-English speaker?
I’m asking this because I get this question a lot.
I’ve noticed that your writing is really well written for a non-first language English
speaker.
Obviously English is not your first language.
What do you do?
Do you have an editor?
Do you have someone proof read it?
Do you just spend a lot of time with a grammar checker?
What’s your strategy for doing that?
Arne Mertz: I started writing in English I think about 2006, 2007.
At first on stack overflow and later I had to do my diploma thesis in English.
All the books I was reading about programming and about physics as well were all in English
so I kind of got the runoff from there.
Well I write my blog because I don’t have an editor, I just proof read them once and
let the spell checker do the rest.
John: Okay, okay, so a lot of practice.
Okay, yeah, because that’s a question I get a lot is—a lot of people ask well should
I blog in my native language and also how can I improve my writing in English.
My answer is usually if you can get someone to proof read it and then they make the corrections
and you make the corrections yourself that they tell you to make so that you get the
exercise in it, but it’s practice, right, it’s a lot of practice.
I’ve never—I’m not fluent in another language so I can’t imagine how difficult
it might be to do it.
All right, well, again, I want to thank you and let everyone know about your blog.
Again, I guess they could probably google Simplify C++.
Arne Mertz: Yes, they can.
John: And then also if you want to type in the address it’s arne-mertz.de and definitely
check it out and leave Arne a comment if you like this stuff.
Every blog out there always _____[00:17:06] needs to get some.
Any last words that you have?
Any final advice?
Arne Mertz: Yeah, so for all the people out there, if you want to—have something to
write about or if you think you have something you want to write just don’t write it down
for you, write it on a blog so others can participate in it.
I think it’s such a good way to start even if you’re just starting learning a language
or something like that.
Others are in the same position and you can share your experience and maybe they can contact
you and you can learn together.
I think it’s a great experience to have a blog.
John: Yeah, totally agree.
Awesome.
All right Arne, well thanks again for your time and I appreciate you coming on here especially
doing video.
I know it’s not easy to do.
I appreciate you being brave and doing video here.
I’ll get this out and hopefully it will help some people that are trying to make the
decision.
To see your success, it’s encouraging to see what can happen in just one year’s time.
Arne Mertz: Thank you.
John: All right, take care.