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Comment by ValtteriL | Hacker News Reader

VSCode has been good enough for markdown blogging for me. Hugo compiles pages on save so its quick to iterate. The markdown preview plugin brings same experience to misc markdown editing.

No new editors to learn and one gets instant access to copilot etc.

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Why would you need copilot for blogging? Isn't the whole appeal of a blog that it's something you, a human created?

Copilot is helpful for handing formatting and repetitive structural stuff. It doesn't need to actually create the content to be useful.

Personally, I’m a lot better at recognizing good writing than producing it, and LLMs are great at being a “calculator for words.”[1] Writing posts became a lot easier once I got an automated editor I could tell to “break up this run-on sentence to make it less confusing” or “rearrange these paragraphs so I introduce concepts before I start using them”. The end result is still the same, but this way I save a lot of time I used to spend glaring at Roget, Strunk, and White.

[1] https://simonwillison.net/2023/Apr/2/calculator-for-words/#c...

I found it very useful for proofreading. It's easier than copying/pasting the content into ChatGPT or similar, as it's right in the editor. I disabled the autocomplete though, as I found it breaks my flow of thoughts

(Wrote about this: https://stanislas.blog/2025/02/writing-workflow-llm/)

I just like keeping all my writing in one place, separate from coding. Obsidian gives me that focused space, and I’ve set it up with a nice font and minimal theme that fits how I like to write.

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