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Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

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Re: Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

#131

Post by skewart »

freehunter wrote: post #46
untog wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it's because they didn't/don't want people to comment in the usual way - you can highlight text on an article and leave short comments in the relevant place if you want to do that. I think the comments section at the end was intended more as a place for lengthy reaction posts. It's why comments have "recommend" rather than "like" as a button. I might "like" someone saying "great post!" but I'm not going to…

Commenting on articles is a terrible method of interaction. Anti-spam is hard, and spammers always win. Trolls always win. Comments rarely add much to the discussion from the article, and they're often hard to follow. There's no reason to leave a comment saying "great post!". It's spam. It's unnecessary. Blogs are a wholly inappropriate place for back-and-forth discourse to happen simply because if I have a blog, it'…

I disagree. There are lots of different kinds of "comments" on blogs. I agree that pingbacks and one word reactions are awful. However, comments that are a few sentences, or a few of paragraphs, of good thoughts are fantastic. Often people can provide additional info on a topic, or they don't have a blog themselves but want to contribute to the conversation. Besides, as a sibling pointed out, HN comments are basically off-site blog comments, and I think a lot of HN readers enjoy them.

I'm sure moderating comments is hard. But when it's done well comments are great.

Re: Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

#132

Post by movedx »

cupcakestand wrote: post #72
JoshMnem wrote: post #6

I don't understand why people write programming blogs on Medium. I think that managing a live website with its own server (rather than only working on other people's projects) is a very important skill. If you don't want to manage WordPress, try a static site generator like Metalsmith: https://github.com/segmentio/metalsmith Deploy on Digital Ocean or Linode for $5/month. Free hosting options include Github Pages and…

Totally agree. Code embedding is also limited on Medium, I think they still lack syntax highlighting. Btw, great tip wih Netlify. How is your experience with them, what are pros cons compared to Github Pages and can I run server code like Node for free?

> Totally agree. Code embedding is also limited on Medium, I think they still lack syntax highlighting.

Limited how? I find embedding GitHub Gist's works perfectly fine and is automatic -- just paste the link to the Gist in your post and you get an embedded object.

Re: Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

#133

Post by jwdunne »

sah2ed wrote: post #116
rattray wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes me curious as to the mechanisms hn employs to combat spam. I've never seen a comment I've been able to tell was spam, which is impressive.

Visit your HN profile then set "showdead" to "yes" to see some of such comments.

I also recommend a visit to the new submissions section. There's a lot more there too.

Re: Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

#134

Post by Kenji »

matwood wrote: post #124
Kenji wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a halfway decent programmer, deploying a simple blog is trivial. There are many existing solutions that don't even require you to write a single line of code, and the problem is simple enough that you could write the entire thing yourself.

> If you're a halfway decent programmer, deploying a simple blog is trivial. The first thing a halfway decent programmer learns is to not reinvent the wheel. I could implement some json library, but I have better things to do. I could deploy and manage wordpress, but that would be a waste of my time. This relates to a post from the last couple days where a potential game programmer got lost in some random issue inste…

I like keeping what I do on my website because it is my property and I would never populate other people's websites with my content, unless I got enough money for it.

Re: Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

#135

Post by mitchty »

cupcakestand wrote: post #97
sigstoat wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe, maybe not. uh it isn't some sort of weird toss-up? i'm referring to specific people who i know. > Even embedded coders face HTML/CSS at some point when their embedded devices incorporates a webserver for some admin interface which sends HTML/CSS to the world (e.g. a router). Or they have create an API doc for their newly created embedded system, on the web. There are many examples. there's a whole world of e…

Ok, it's hard to imagine that such people exist but I believe what you say. You are right, they should rather use Medium.

I work with a lot of kernel dev type people, you may find it hard to imagine but there are a lot of people that only program in c, maybe python.

I even know a lot of fortran only programmers. If you think html and css are common you might want to expand your scope of programmers, there is a lot of people that don't need or want to know about web programming.

Re: Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

#136

Post by int_19h »

icebraining wrote: post #27
qznc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not know Netlify and looked it up. I found this image [0] on their features page. Is that a joke or does their cli tool really use left-pad? [0] https://www.netlify.com/img/features/section-art/dev-tools.p...

I think it's a joke (npm doesn't list it). I would say the next two packages were just joke names, but apparently "is-positive-integer" does exist[1]... though I suppose it might still be a more elaborate joke, but 1000+ downloads per month? The JavaScript world is simply amazing. [1] https://www.npmjs.com/package/is-positive-integer

It's not a joke.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11350142

Re: Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

#137

Post by tuxracer »

Sylos wrote: post #105
pmontra wrote: post #73

About the dickbars: 1) I uBlock them on my phone and tablet. Unfortunately there are plenty of random sites on Medium with their own domain. I don't follow any of them and get there from HN or similar sites. Blocking all of them doesn't make sense because I'll probably never get back to that domain. I agree with the author, the button in the middle of the page really sucks. 2) On desktop, the button and the dickbar n…

In case you're not aware, NoScript also exists for Android: https://noscript.net/nsa/ Not quite as functional as its bigger brother, but an option nonetheless.

NoScript is also integrated into https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brave.brow... This uses Chrome so there's likely higher compatibility with mobile sites

Re: Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

#138

Post by vacri »

vilmosi wrote: post #100
freehunter wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commenting on articles is a terrible method of interaction. Anti-spam is hard, and spammers always win. Trolls always win. Comments rarely add much to the discussion from the article, and they're often hard to follow. There's no reason to leave a comment saying "great post!". It's spam. It's unnecessary. Blogs are a wholly inappropriate place for back-and-forth discourse to happen simply because if I have a blog, it'…

> Commenting on articles is a terrible method of interaction. Anti-spam is hard, and spammers always win. Trolls always win. But that's practically what HN is, yet I like to believe it's a good platform without too much spam or trolls.

HN has several moderators. If you're willing to add eyeballs, any system can work.

Re: Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

#139

Post by bdcravens »

movedx wrote: post #129
bdcravens wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a programmer use Github when they could easily run Gitlab on Digital Ocean?

GitHub's UI is far superior, for one. You're also placing your code in an ecosystem of other OSS projects, which I believe is a good thing. Also, GitHub private repositories for an individual are far cheaper than running a H/A GitLab on DO, AWS, Linode, or any provider worth mentioning. By definition of running a H/A solution on DO's cheapest offering, you're paying $15/month for three VMs, and we haven't started tal…

Many of the same arguments could made for using Medium instead of running your own blog software.

Re: Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

#140

Post by cyberferret »

tyingq wrote: post #2

"Writing comments to Medium posts feels awkward because each comment is treated as a blog post." This is also awkward from the reader point of view. Trying to follow a comment chain on medium is frustrating as it only shows the first level, diving in switches pages, and often, a need to press a second "load all comments" button. Then the back button to wind your way back up. Is there some sound reasoning for why it w…

I really miss the old 'sidebar' comments that they used to have when Medium first came out. It was a great way to post a short one or two line observation, and see it appear right next to the line/paragraph you were wanting to talk about.

While I am on 'things I miss in Medium', I miss the old 'Collections' paradigm they used to have - I enjoyed picking Collection categories where I could browse topical stories (e.g. Programming, Fantasy, Food etc.) - but I especially miss being able to post stories of my own into a collection. I thought I used to get FAR better engagement with fans of a particular collection that way. Now I have to beg around for a curator of a 'Publication' on Medium to post my articles on their 'Magazine' in order to get to a special interest group on there.

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