I don't think writing is just about communicating things to other people. It's also communicating things to yourself.
I think the greatest value in writing things down is to order and articulate your own thoughts. Certainly in my own case, I never finish a large chunk of articles I start to write simply because during the research I find out I was wrong, or that things are more complex than I thought and I'm no longer sure I'm right.
An additional reason is that publishing your thoughts also means people can point out flaws or points you hadn't considered. Maintaining a website is just one way of doing that of course (commenting here is another), but I find it's a pretty effective way.
Yeah! And remember to back it up. I had a blog in the early days when it was all new, and bitterly regret not backing it up properly - 5 years of content gone.
I handle my websites in a way that provide automatic backups -- I keep complete mirrors on my own machines that are already part of a backup regime. I make changes to the mirrors, and then upload the changes from there to the public sites.
That way, I always have an offline copy without having to remember to make one specifically.
No, I wrote the blog software myself and all the content was stored in a MySQL database on my rented host. I thought I'd backed it up, but hadn't. It's the usual story of "it isn't a backup until you've tested it".
This fits my experience as well. It’s always interesting to see what assumptions or unspecific placeholders I made that are fleshed out when actually writing.
To pick a bit, your *Breaking Bad" reference occurs well into the series, not at the start. It opens with his diagnosis, which sets everything else in motion.
I think the greatest value in writing things down is to order and articulate your own thoughts. Certainly in my own case, I never finish a large chunk of articles I start to write simply because during the research I find out I was wrong, or that things are more complex than I thought and I'm no longer sure I'm right.
See my personal website for a post I wrote about that :-) https://arp242.net/weblog/why-write.html
An additional reason is that publishing your thoughts also means people can point out flaws or points you hadn't considered. Maintaining a website is just one way of doing that of course (commenting here is another), but I find it's a pretty effective way.