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A Byte of Coding – A curated newsletter of programming articles

62 points| vonadz | 5 years ago |abyteofcoding.com | reply

23 comments

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[+] asicsp|5 years ago|reply
Nice, adding your own comments AND tags is helpful to know whether to open the article or not.

Suggestions:

* Clickable tags to see all articles that qualify for that tag (or a general search feature like https://rust-lang.github.io/mdBook/)

* Option to subscribe once a week/month instead of 4 times a week.

[+] vonadz|5 years ago|reply
Thanks for the advice! I'll look into adding both of those features.
[+] jasode|5 years ago|reply
>[...] articles that I personally curate from across the interwebs. [...], so I select articles

Not to dissuade you from your effort but I wanted to offer why I won't subscribe: Because I don't know who you are, I would also need to see the articles you reject and your reasons why. (E.g. I spent 20 minutes reading "Why Machine Learning Won't Cure Cancer" and you can avoid wasting time and skip it. My criteria for rejection are...)

I explained this reasoning in a previous comment about a similar service: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22545396

[+] vonadz|5 years ago|reply
That's actually a great idea! And I have the perfect article for it too.
[+] msadowski|5 years ago|reply
As a fellow newsletter maintainer (https://weeklyrobotics.com/) I can only imagine how much efforts it takes to put something out 4 times a week.

Is your workflow automated in any way? I would appreciate any tips you might have!

[+] vonadz|5 years ago|reply
Currently, not really. I plan to very soon though. Mostly for scouring the web for new sources. I wouldn't say I've hyper optimized my time enough to give any good tips. I used to work for Pek (https://morningcupofcoding.com/) and I'm sure he can offer much better advice than me.
[+] antisol|5 years ago|reply
This would be cool as an RSS feed, with each article a new entry, but in it's current form it's not something I'd subscribe to: * I don't just give out my email address * I don't want 4 emails per week, that's a huge volume that will just get routinely ignored after about 3 days. * the RSS feed that I did find (for the archive) has one entry per edition, meaning that I'd have to read each one. I want to just scan it for articles that I might care about.
[+] vonadz|5 years ago|reply
* #1: Not much I can do about this * #2: I'll be setting up a weekly edition as well * #3: This just goes counter to what the newsletter is about. One of my main inspirations for it is the fact that you can find inspiration in unexpected places, including articles that at first glance don't appeal to you. There have been countless times where I've read an article for the newsletter on a topic I wasn't really interested in, only to have something related to it unexpectedly come up a couple of weeks later for work or in conversation. I think being knowledgeable of topics beyond your areas of interest is very beneficial. Hell, you might also find that something you initially thought was lame, was actually pretty cool and get into it more.
[+] MaxBarraclough|5 years ago|reply
This reminds me of https://www.osnews.com , a combination of a tech news site and a personal blog (all submissions come from Thom Holwerda).

Are you planning on supporting comments? OSnews does quite well with a small but active community.

[+] vonadz|5 years ago|reply
Yeah I'd be down to add comments for issues on the site. Ideally I'd like for people to be able to add them without accounts, but I can also see how that might cause problems. I'll ask in the next issue if that's a feature people would like.
[+] faceless33|5 years ago|reply
Thought about this as a business idea but didn't find any way to monetize this except to sell something through email list. Can you elaborate on this part?
[+] vonadz|5 years ago|reply
Currently I just offer people to support me on Patreon or through donations. I might have ads in the future (for non-supporters) if a company whose product I actually use comes to me about it. My only goal right now is to be getting more than I pay per month on mailchimp/hosting, which is about $55. Ultimately I hope that if people find value in the work I'm doing, they'll help support it. If not, oh well. I'm enjoying curating, writing, and connecting with subscribers, and that's enough for me at this point.
[+] k1e|5 years ago|reply
Thank you.

But having RSS as an option would be even better for those who already use RSS readers.

[+] vonadz|5 years ago|reply
I appreciate the tip, but I like the email format more. Reminds me of writing letters and feels more personal.