I had been sitting on the draft of my post “When You Should Use Null in Kotlin” since November (for 3 months) because after I had a colleague review it, I wasn’t sure if my views were valid. My colleague told me about “null, the billion-dollar mistake” and asked if I was just trying to “stir the pot” with a possibly unpopular opinion. That made me question if my views were actually valid, so I didn’t hit “Publish”.
Draft was Last Modified 3 Months Ago
Validation
Earlier this month, Roman Elizarov (@relizarov), from the Kotlin libraries team posted an article which validated my thoughts I shared in my draft post, null is something to use, and not completely avoid:
I was excited to see a like-minded post from one of my software idols who designs the Kotlin language:
Chatting with Roman at Google I/O 2018
Thanks to this validation, I finally got up the courage to finish my post which took many hours and reviews, but I finally published my article. 😄 Thanks Roman (@relizarov)!
Non-null Opinions
I encourage you to share your opinion on topics where you have spent enough time digging into a topic to develop one. So much of computer science is subjective, and there will always be varying opinions. As long as you have identified reasons why you feel a certain way, those are valid.
It’s okay to share your thoughts. Your opinion is non-null 😂. Be humble enough to listen to others and allow yourself to use objective reasoning to help shape your understanding.
Leverage The Community
The Android community has varying opinions on many things, but that isn’t a bad thing. There is no single way to do something, and whether or not something is the right solution depends on the use case, and the skills of the team.
Many members of the community are there to help. I encourage you to reach out and ask for feedback from more than one person as it will help you get well rounded feedback. Before I published the post I got feedback from @molsjeroen, @ataulm, @ZakTaccardi, @gpeal8 and @jarvisapps. Each person had slightly different insights, and it helped me create a higher quality post.
A Checklist for Hitting Publish
- Write your content
- Add applicable content/images/code
- Review your content as if you were a reader
- Ask for reviews from 2+ people
- Address feedback
- Set a time limit (3? days)
I put together this checklist to help guide me in the future, and hope it will allow me to publish more posts! I have at least 5 more drafts in my head that I need to get to next. By publishing these articles, I’m able to get to the next one, and hopefully help someone publish theirs.