Getting your name on an explainer.
There is no submit button on this page, and that is deliberate. Explaining something clearly is hard, and the value of these pieces comes from somebody having been edited properly rather than from there being more of them.
If you are being mentored here, writing one is part of it. If you are not and you want to be, that conversation starts the same way everything else does.
- 01We are already working togetherEvery explainer here has been written by somebody I know well enough to review honestly. That is the filter, and it is the only one.
- 02You get an accountAn invitation link, a password you choose, and the same editor I use. Your drafts are private to you until you send them.
- 03I read it before anybody else doesNothing publishes itself. I edit for clarity, we go back and forth if it needs it, and then it goes up with your name on it.
What makes a good one
One idea, one everyday thing it works like.
The pieces that work here take a single concept somebody is stuck on and pair it with something they already understand. Caching is a sticky note on your monitor. Load balancing is a host at a restaurant. The analogy is not decoration on top of the explanation, it is the explanation.
The ones that do not work try to cover a whole area. An explainer about “databases” is a textbook chapter nobody finishes. One about why an index makes a query faster is four minutes somebody remembers a year later.
Write it for the person you were six months before you understood it. That person is the entire audience, and they are not stupid, they just have not seen it yet.