5 ms·

Discover the best developer blogs on any tech stack

304 points by mlent 6y ago

chovybizzass 6y ago
no new submissions in last 10 days.
- mlent 6y ago
  thanks for point this out! just accepted a bunch of pending submissions :)
ChanningAllen 6y ago
Love the concept. One slight improvement that would push me to actually bookmark a site like this is if, rather than merely listing _entire blogs_, it listed a feed of the most recent _posts_ from the various blogs. Posts are the level of abstraction that directly aligns with our reading habits. (Similar story for podcasts: give me an episode feed, not a podcast feed.) Twitter and other social media giants have cracked this code well.
- mlent 6y ago
  OP here! Great point. Right now each blog just shows the #1 trending post, but it could definitely also pull recent articles by RSS feed. Thanks Channing!
mariodiana 6y ago
I remember the days of Joel Spolsky, Elliot Rusty Harold, Bruce Eckel, et al. Who are today's luminaries?
- m_st 6y ago
  I remember Joel too. Especially also the forums where you could get in contact with (among others) industry leaders. One of today's (tech) luminaries? For me it's Scott Hanselman. Always worth reading, even if you're not particularly on the Microsoft stack. https://www.hanselman.com/blog/ https://www.hanselman.com/blog/
ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago
I like the concept but the curation would have to be done ruthlessly by experts, otherwise you'll get the same SEO optimized garbage we find on google. To see Machine Learning Mastery at the top doesn't inspire confidence in your curation process. It's a blog that's emblematic to me of low quality content pumped out for SEO purposes.
- mlent 6y ago
  thanks for your feedback (OP here). yeah it's tough, i try to give anyone a chance to rank who has more than just a few posts. what I didn't expect about that site is that it gets shared A LOT on twitter. still trying to refine the algorithm :) thanks a ton for checking it out and sharing your feedback!
  - mumblemumble 6y ago
    Perhaps there could be a ranking that takes posting frequency into account, and lets people decide whether they want to see higher- or lower-volume blogs. Perhaps not a straight ascending or descending by frequency. For me, the sweet spot seems to be no more than once a month. More if it's one that does something like a weekly post aggregating interesting articles from other blogs.
    - mlent 6y ago
      That's a cool idea! Adding an "advanced search" is something I've been thinking about. Gives people more control over their personal "algorithm" and what they value most when reading personal blogs. Hadn't thought about frequency but that could definitely be something you could automate based on RSS. Thanks for the idea!
    - pc86 6y ago
      Why would you penalize a blog with 3 authors who publish 3x the articles of a personal blog? Why would you penalize higher volume at all? Trying to ascribe anything close to quality based on volume is like trying to grade developer productivity and/or skill by LOC.
tnorthcutt 6y ago
I love this! Sometimes it's hard to find articles by individuals about dev topics, especially more niche topics, because it's hard for them to rise above Stack Overflow, Medium, etc. in search results. But I find that individual/independent blogs are often far higher quality and do a better job explaining concepts.
- mlent 6y ago
  (OP) thanks for checking it out! it was definitely cool (but also surprisingly hard) to discover so many independent blogs by making this project. i'm glad you like it.
lailalessdad 6y ago
https://instapage.grsm.io/lailaless8672 https://instapage.grsm.io/lailaless8672 the best
asebold 6y ago
Nice. I've been so burnt out seeing the same type of content for certain topics I follow. This looks like a promising tool for finding fresh new info.
- mlent 6y ago
  OP here, I'm glad you liked it! I definitely discovered a lot of interesting people blogging while sourcing the data. Hope you find something cool inside :)
nilsandrey 6y ago
I liked the idea, but I'm expecting the home page to be more like "https://bloggingfordevs.com/trends/ https://bloggingfordevs.com/trends/" with a link or banner link or something to the stuff it's at home today; at least having the links to trends at first instead of need to moving to the bottom to see them. I'm afraid some colleagues didn't found out and just kept on the first page. You directly go to dark mode ;) it's more popular I known; I like to suggest a light mode; maybe you can read it from the system like StackOverflow.
- mlent 6y ago
  OP here, thanks for the suggestion! Yeah it's kinda meant to be like its own mini site. But if you click the logo at the top, it does take you to the root homepage :) Adding a light mode is on the backlog, thanks for the suggestion! I need to remove a few hard-coded CSS values first ;)
DLA 6y ago
Straight up awesome work. Love this! Thank you.
- mlent 6y ago
  OP here, appreciate the feedback! Hope you find something cool while browsing.
terribledustin 6y ago
I love the idea of adding some way to have crowd bias and not all mlent alone curating. Not that I think you’ll be corrupt, but more that popular opinion is _often_ good.
icameron 6y ago
I inherited some old Rails code and am updating sites recently. It turns out whoever wrote the code I'm working on was using blog-driven development. Getting a kick out of finding many old blog posts where the code originated from. Google->Ctrl+C->Ctrl-V->Repeat
playing_colours 6y ago
These days, my experience to use Google search for finding good sources for some high level technical question is very bad in general that can be summarised as going through piles of corporate blog posts with shallow content promoting their products. I would be happy to use human curated collections of links by topics.
- mlent 6y ago
  OP here, I know what you mean. I found it similarly irritating while sourcing the data that all the top 10 google results recycled the same, outdated recommendations. Do you mean you'd like a central place to discover individual's curated list of blogs they read? Like blogrolls?
pimterry 6y ago
This is great! If you're looking for other similar sites, I'd also suggest taking a look at https://engineeringblogs.xyz/ https://engineeringblogs.xyz/ too. While the BFD trends site is focused on personal developer blogs & trending posts, that one includes high-quality engineering team blogs too, like Cloudflare and Google Research. It's a bit simpler, and focuses simply on the latest posts rather than trending content, but it's worth a look.
pentagrama 6y ago
Let's appreciate that this project try to give visibility to personal self-hosted blogs (not mediums, linkedins, substacks, dev.tos) and is using (I guess) good old RSS tech to get the articles. Cheers! * opens google.com/reader and plays the 2005 Gorillaz hit song Feel Good Inc before going to the cinema to see V for Vendetta *
- mlent 6y ago
  Haha thanks! (OP here) I'm using a combination of the Twitter API, RSS, and Puppeteer to put the data together. RSS is nice but not always complete, and some blogs don't have it :) Glad you enjoy it, and yes, the goal is to make it easier to find blogs from individuals. I don't reject sites hosted on 3rd party platforms, but I do encourage people to post their own domain name when possible. Cheers!
nojito 6y ago
This affiliate spam in the programming community is getting ridiculous.
- mlent 6y ago
  hey! OP here. are you talking about my site? I don't have a single affiliate link on my website. not sure about the sites linked, but i reject sites that are low quality and filled with aggressive ads!
njdullea 6y ago
I couldn't figure out how to switch from all topics to something else on mobile
99_00 6y ago
I've found immediately useful information and look forward to digging deeper into the content. Thank you so much for this. Your site is exactly what's been missing for me for so long.
- mlent 6y ago
  i'm glad you've found it useful! makes me super happy to hear :)
wyck 6y ago
Anything that takes traffic away from Google is a good thing. Bring back the old school internet, forums, curated lists, niche communities, irc !
penguin_booze 6y ago
I was wondering if you can offer RSS feed for the stuff that ends up on the front page.
thepra 6y ago
Really, you need twitter to submit suggestions of topics?
nirajkrsingh 6y ago
Thank you so much for sharing this useful and informative information with us. Cybonetic Technologies is a leading web hosting company in Patna offering Fast and Reliable Web Hosting. Buy a domain and hosting at the cheap prices with 24x7 support. <a href="https://www.cybonetic.com/web-hosting">web https://www.cybonetic.com/web-hosting">web hosting company in patna</a>
nirajkrsingh 6y ago
Thank you so much for sharing this useful and informative information with us. Cybonetic Technologies is a leading web hosting company in Patna offering Fast and Reliable Web Hosting. Buy a domain and hosting at the cheap prices with 24x7 support. <a href="https://www.cybonetic.com/web-hosting https://www.cybonetic.com/web-hosting">
rboaro 6y ago
Where is the Delphi? Please add for us! Thanks
ziadallaghi 6y ago
Experts have to do more virtual conferences and meetings, for example, to increase benefit
rptr 6y ago
Can you please create a separate section for System programming(C, C++, Operating systems, compilers...). I would like to submit few blog entries from my collection.

304 points by mlent 6y ago

chovybizzass 6y ago

no new submissions in last 10 days.

mlent 6y ago
thanks for point this out! just accepted a bunch of pending submissions :)

ChanningAllen 6y ago

Love the concept. One slight improvement that would push me to actually bookmark a site like this is if, rather than merely listing _entire blogs_, it listed a feed of the most recent _posts_ from the various blogs. Posts are the level of abstraction that directly aligns with our reading habits. (Similar story for podcasts: give me an episode feed, not a podcast feed.) Twitter and other social media giants have cracked this code well.

mlent 6y ago
OP here! Great point. Right now each blog just shows the #1 trending post, but it could definitely also pull recent articles by RSS feed. Thanks Channing!

mariodiana 6y ago

I remember the days of Joel Spolsky, Elliot Rusty Harold, Bruce Eckel, et al. Who are today's luminaries?

m_st 6y ago
I remember Joel too. Especially also the forums where you could get in contact with (among others) industry leaders. One of today's (tech) luminaries? For me it's Scott Hanselman. Always worth reading, even if you're not particularly on the Microsoft stack. https://www.hanselman.com/blog/ https://www.hanselman.com/blog/

ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago

I like the concept but the curation would have to be done ruthlessly by experts, otherwise you'll get the same SEO optimized garbage we find on google. To see Machine Learning Mastery at the top doesn't inspire confidence in your curation process. It's a blog that's emblematic to me of low quality content pumped out for SEO purposes.

mlent 6y ago
thanks for your feedback (OP here). yeah it's tough, i try to give anyone a chance to rank who has more than just a few posts. what I didn't expect about that site is that it gets shared A LOT on twitter. still trying to refine the algorithm :) thanks a ton for checking it out and sharing your feedback!
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  Perhaps there could be a ranking that takes posting frequency into account, and lets people decide whether they want to see higher- or lower-volume blogs. Perhaps not a straight ascending or descending by frequency. For me, the sweet spot seems to be no more than once a month. More if it's one that does something like a weekly post aggregating interesting articles from other blogs.
  - mlent 6y ago
    That's a cool idea! Adding an "advanced search" is something I've been thinking about. Gives people more control over their personal "algorithm" and what they value most when reading personal blogs. Hadn't thought about frequency but that could definitely be something you could automate based on RSS. Thanks for the idea!
  - pc86 6y ago
    Why would you penalize a blog with 3 authors who publish 3x the articles of a personal blog? Why would you penalize higher volume at all? Trying to ascribe anything close to quality based on volume is like trying to grade developer productivity and/or skill by LOC.

tnorthcutt 6y ago

I love this! Sometimes it's hard to find articles by individuals about dev topics, especially more niche topics, because it's hard for them to rise above Stack Overflow, Medium, etc. in search results. But I find that individual/independent blogs are often far higher quality and do a better job explaining concepts.

mlent 6y ago
(OP) thanks for checking it out! it was definitely cool (but also surprisingly hard) to discover so many independent blogs by making this project. i'm glad you like it.

lailalessdad 6y ago

https://instapage.grsm.io/lailaless8672 https://instapage.grsm.io/lailaless8672 the best

asebold 6y ago

Nice. I've been so burnt out seeing the same type of content for certain topics I follow. This looks like a promising tool for finding fresh new info.

mlent 6y ago
OP here, I'm glad you liked it! I definitely discovered a lot of interesting people blogging while sourcing the data. Hope you find something cool inside :)

nilsandrey 6y ago

I liked the idea, but I'm expecting the home page to be more like "https://bloggingfordevs.com/trends/ https://bloggingfordevs.com/trends/" with a link or banner link or something to the stuff it's at home today; at least having the links to trends at first instead of need to moving to the bottom to see them. I'm afraid some colleagues didn't found out and just kept on the first page. You directly go to dark mode ;) it's more popular I known; I like to suggest a light mode; maybe you can read it from the system like StackOverflow.

mlent 6y ago
OP here, thanks for the suggestion! Yeah it's kinda meant to be like its own mini site. But if you click the logo at the top, it does take you to the root homepage :) Adding a light mode is on the backlog, thanks for the suggestion! I need to remove a few hard-coded CSS values first ;)

DLA 6y ago

Straight up awesome work. Love this! Thank you.

mlent 6y ago
OP here, appreciate the feedback! Hope you find something cool while browsing.

terribledustin 6y ago

I love the idea of adding some way to have crowd bias and not all mlent alone curating. Not that I think you’ll be corrupt, but more that popular opinion is _often_ good.

icameron 6y ago

I inherited some old Rails code and am updating sites recently. It turns out whoever wrote the code I'm working on was using blog-driven development. Getting a kick out of finding many old blog posts where the code originated from. Google->Ctrl+C->Ctrl-V->Repeat

playing_colours 6y ago

These days, my experience to use Google search for finding good sources for some high level technical question is very bad in general that can be summarised as going through piles of corporate blog posts with shallow content promoting their products. I would be happy to use human curated collections of links by topics.

mlent 6y ago
OP here, I know what you mean. I found it similarly irritating while sourcing the data that all the top 10 google results recycled the same, outdated recommendations. Do you mean you'd like a central place to discover individual's curated list of blogs they read? Like blogrolls?

pimterry 6y ago

This is great! If you're looking for other similar sites, I'd also suggest taking a look at https://engineeringblogs.xyz/ https://engineeringblogs.xyz/ too. While the BFD trends site is focused on personal developer blogs & trending posts, that one includes high-quality engineering team blogs too, like Cloudflare and Google Research. It's a bit simpler, and focuses simply on the latest posts rather than trending content, but it's worth a look.

pentagrama 6y ago

Let's appreciate that this project try to give visibility to personal self-hosted blogs (not mediums, linkedins, substacks, dev.tos) and is using (I guess) good old RSS tech to get the articles. Cheers! * opens google.com/reader and plays the 2005 Gorillaz hit song Feel Good Inc before going to the cinema to see V for Vendetta *

mlent 6y ago
Haha thanks! (OP here) I'm using a combination of the Twitter API, RSS, and Puppeteer to put the data together. RSS is nice but not always complete, and some blogs don't have it :) Glad you enjoy it, and yes, the goal is to make it easier to find blogs from individuals. I don't reject sites hosted on 3rd party platforms, but I do encourage people to post their own domain name when possible. Cheers!

nojito 6y ago

This affiliate spam in the programming community is getting ridiculous.

mlent 6y ago
hey! OP here. are you talking about my site? I don't have a single affiliate link on my website. not sure about the sites linked, but i reject sites that are low quality and filled with aggressive ads!

njdullea 6y ago

I couldn't figure out how to switch from all topics to something else on mobile

99_00 6y ago

I've found immediately useful information and look forward to digging deeper into the content. Thank you so much for this. Your site is exactly what's been missing for me for so long.

mlent 6y ago
i'm glad you've found it useful! makes me super happy to hear :)

wyck 6y ago

Anything that takes traffic away from Google is a good thing. Bring back the old school internet, forums, curated lists, niche communities, irc !

penguin_booze 6y ago

I was wondering if you can offer RSS feed for the stuff that ends up on the front page.

thepra 6y ago

Really, you need twitter to submit suggestions of topics?

nirajkrsingh 6y ago

Thank you so much for sharing this useful and informative information with us. Cybonetic Technologies is a leading web hosting company in Patna offering Fast and Reliable Web Hosting. Buy a domain and hosting at the cheap prices with 24x7 support. <a href="https://www.cybonetic.com/web-hosting">web https://www.cybonetic.com/web-hosting">web hosting company in patna</a>

nirajkrsingh 6y ago

rboaro 6y ago

Where is the Delphi? Please add for us! Thanks

ziadallaghi 6y ago

Experts have to do more virtual conferences and meetings, for example, to increase benefit

rptr 6y ago

Can you please create a separate section for System programming(C, C++, Operating systems, compilers...). I would like to submit few blog entries from my collection.