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Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

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241–250 of 259 posts

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#241
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just this morning I was thinking of making a search engine that only looks among personal blogs plus a whitelist of sites like stackoverflow and Wikipedia. Or something like the old web in general. Or it has to be non profit (no ads, no subscription options, no paid content, only donation/flattr if anything). I haven't decided on a good rule yet, it's quite tricky. At any rate, the idea is to somehow filter out all t…

You'll probably like Million Short ( https://millionshort.com/ ) then, a search engine that can filter out the most popular websites.

This is pretty nice. It's effectively working as a blocklist from top domains.

It would be interesting to see a curated version with an allowlist of domains as well, like how Angelfire and friends in the 90s used to be with a "web ring" of peer websites.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#242
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congrats on creating content on your personal website. I am trying with my own but I still dont have a good habit in place to write. I agree that running a personal website is a time sink. But there are many other options like: Github/Gitlab Pages, Medium .... Persoanlly, I prefer simple HTML pages or Markdown. Plain HTML will render easy many years from now. They are easy to transfer and hard to get lost between mig…

GitHub pages is really just a hosting service for Jekyll. My website is getting close to the maximum size for GitHub pages anyway (the limit is only 1 GB). Medium is unworkable for too many reasons. I started out writing my webpage in HTML, and if you dig around you can find my old GeoCities page, but plain HTML suffers from some problems that make it high-friction for posting frequent updates. So you start adding a…

Is it 1GB of text + source code? I can't imagine that much plaintext from one person unless binaries, images music, or video is involved. Github Pages is probably fine for most people even with the 1GB limit.

Btw, cool website. I didn't realize there's an N64 homebrew game development scene until looking at your blog.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a blog on medium as well, I just haven't been motivated to contribute to it for a while. It may be my "reach" as others have stated. I like pushing out the small tutorials that I write, but I just can't justify 3 hours (ish) of work for I also don't want to have to buy a domain and have a hosting service to push my own site having to load it up with ads or other nonsense just to make a side hustle possible. So…

Took a quick look. If you want my take, your basic tutorials are, well... too basic. They describe fundamental language principles in a well-established programming language for which there's already a wealth of material available. Frankly, there's already a million articles and books that cover that. IMHO, you need to write about some cool hot or esoteric feature that solves a specific problem in a new way. Or about…

I really appreciate that feedback, thanks! The hardest part about picking a topic that you're interested in and writing, is finding people to give you the honest feedback about what you're produced. Now I have a starting point to improve :)

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#248
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suggesting a workaround is not addressing the root cause. Please don't.

Would you also advise against installing ad blockers?

Ads are a universal problem. Starting an post on HN saying “hey let’s not use internet to advertise” will have zero impact. You have to take into your own hands and block.

A thread about changing how programmers distribute written content in the context of HN could actually have an impact.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer ads, but I'm one of those weirdos that doesn't see a problem with ads, and actually prefers targeted ads.

I don't have a problem with ads in general. But, I prefer not to have targeted ads -- I prefer ads that shoot from the hip and know as little about me as possible. I know that's not as compelling for advertisers, but they did ok with that model for a century. I mean, if it were just as simple as, he likes gadgets and cycling: let's show him an ad for a new bike accessory -- that isn't so bad. But when they know what…

I'm very curious whether you have a citation RE mood and insecurities. I don't disbelieve you but they are pretty extraordinary claims.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#250
post #5

For the past ~3 weeks Medium has blocked virtually every article I wanted to read and is asking me to pay. Most of these are programming tutorials related to some obscure Rails features. Honestly, I feel like Medium is the worse place to put your content. EDIT: For context, I don’t mind people monetizing their content, but in that case I’d rather pay them directly (like GoRails), and not a “subscription” for somethin…

Not the best solution - but I post it on twitter and use that link to access the article(since Medium paywalled article is free through twitter) and delete the tweet in few seconds later.

TIL
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