I've just subscribed. No shame in my eyes, the more the merrier. Things like this help me keep afloat of what's going on. Thank you for the great resource :)
Just read Issue #35 and subscribed - congrats on getting this off the ground. I have some feedback as I run a similar newsletter for long form books and articles over at https://theconsider.com. The following has come from subscribers and been helpful to me:
- The paragraph to paragraph format can be a little jarring in teams of reading through. When you move from OpenAI to QT in #35, for instance, there's no clear transition. In my newsletter, I'll use bold titles to break up recommendations
- Add a time estimation on how long it will take to complete the article / blog post / whatever. When something can be done in < 15 minutes, people generally read on the spot. If longer, people will make time for it if they're interested. Either way, it's helpful to the reader to just let them know how big a time investment something is
- Add a place for people to e-mail you their favorite coding articles, papers, etc. Some of my most clicked recommendations have come from subscribers
Awesome job again. I'm excited to get this on the daily.
Latest article has a typo: "program that let's a user". Should be: "program that lets a user".
I think a daily newsletter is too frequent. It'll get harder to maintain as time goes by; when doing something like this people expect consistency.
Not a big fan of the daily programming language section. Based on this list [0] you'll run out of items for it after two year. Better start pumping out new programming languages every day to keep things going!
Thanks for pointing out the typo. Wish I could fix it :/ I'll be more diligent about them in the future.
It's every work day, so five days a week, but your point still stands. I think the daily part is pretty integral to the premise, although I understand your concerns. Currently, and for the foreseeable future, I have the time to invest in this. I guess we'll have to wait and see. I can promise that I will be listening to feedback.
From what I've seen during the time I have been doing this, there's more than enough languages right now to fill at least 5 years, and this is assuming no other languages are being developed during this time. Also, I have a list of my own which contains languages that are not in the link you provided but have a Wikipedia page (Befunge for example), so that list is definitely not exhaustive. And finally, two years is a pretty good runtime :)
Ditto. I've experimented with sending newsletters myself. I do think they work better on a narrow topic where people really do want that regular update pushed to them. But, for the most part, I find that newsletter end up filtered to folders I rarely read. Better to have in Feedly (or other RSS reader) where I can peruse them when I have some downtime.
The name remind me of Chris Alcock's [The Morning Brew](http://blog.cwa.me.uk), a .NET orientated daily roundup of articles that I've followed for years now. I recommend it.
I love the morning brew but it has gone down in quality over the years. There used to be a short summary of every link but these days it is just a list of links.
I still check it every day but I find that I click through less and less of the links.
You gotta respect Chris though for keeping it going for over 11 years now!!
This should do the trick. For now I will be manually updating this until I create an automated workflow. I do not guarantee that this will work forever (the update process is rather clunky right now).
If you're able to copy the archives across to your own site, it might be worth it for the SEO benefits (and you can put the signup form at the top of each page). But your focus on automated workflow seems very wise.
One suggestion - you might want to add an actual unsubscribe link on the site. I once had somebody subscribe to one of my lists, who then wanted to unsubscribe before receiving the first email and was quite upset that they couldn't find an unsubscribe link on the site itself.
I want to keep this primarily as a newsletter because it allows me to speak directly to my readers in many different ways. While I will have an RSS link and post the emails on the website, those are there mostly to give an idea of the newsletter rather than the preferred way of reading it.
Thanks for the unsubscribe link suggestion. I went ahead and added it.
Looking into this right now. I'm surprised it's taking me longer than 2 seconds to find a solution. I would expect MailChimp to have this built in... Unless I'm blind.
would this not be better every other day or 3rd day?
Every day is just too much and maintaining quality is not sustainable unless there is a team working full time on this.
Technically it's every work day, so five days a week, but I understand what you mean. I think only time will tell. I can promise to listen to feedback and if daily doesn't work I'm willing to switch it.
I am bring sincere with this question: what does this offer that HN (which is somewhat manually curated itself) or existing HN newsletters don't already?
The newsletter focuses strictly on content with the following attributes:
- Recent, no more than a week old
- Strictly in an article format, no videos or other media formats
- Technical deep dives, not short tutorial-like content
- Educational, something new or interesting
It is designed to be read once every morning before work.
HN has no such restrictions. I do not think they are mutually exclusive.
It's what I strive for in terms of time of publish, selection of content, aesthetics, etc, etc. I understand that realistically not everybody will receive it in the morning. I think reading at lunchtime is a good time as well :)
I was going to say something similar. I have JS disabled and auto reader mode enabled, and get a blank page.
On average, I’ve found news sites render a bit better with JavaScript off (on iOS 11.x), due to misguided attempts to improve on default browser behavior, and this site is clearly in the minority on that front. I also wonder what serving an empty page with a pile of JavaScript does for SEO, but I have no practical experience with that.
High quality software engineering articles - both newsletter and RSS feed.
Been running it for about an year - curating over 1200+ links! 8-10 links every weekday, newsletter every weekend!
Sorry for the shameless plug! Just thought people who'd like this would also find Discover Dev helpful!