Ask HN: Are technical blogs dead? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are technical blogs dead?

14 pointsquaintdev26 comments

I think the traffic for technical blogs has plummeted. Why would anyone searh for technical blog when they can just ask their agent about it? Also I am seeing less and less of them here on hacker news.

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If you write one for likes and shares then yeah, totally dead. The same is true for all internet content though. AI has removed the need for anyone to ever visit a website again if they're happy to read what AI generates.

If you write one to solidify your thinking, or for you to refer back to in the future, then they're just as useful as ever.

Also, if you write a good post people will drop into the comments to accuse you of generating it, which is pretty disheartening. You can't blame people for not sharing.

> Why would anyone searh for technical blog when they can just ask their agent about it?

- To get the human perspective about something from an expert.

- To get the history of something, because there's still much to learn from there that LLMs can't really teach us.

Eg. "Why did you make those decisions way back when?"

This is why I enjoy Raymond Chen's blog[1] and folklore.org[2] so much. I don't think LLMs can replace that.

Now only if we could get more DEC, SGI and early Sun people blogging before they croak.

1. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/author/oldnewthin...

2. https://folklore.org/

These are really great points. I would add that there might still be people interested in the human perspective of technical problem solving, though maybe not in the super technical cases. For example, youtube channels like "Stuff Made Here" are essentially technical vlogs, except he isn't solving for a "real world" issue. That is, its more experimental and deliberately fun.

I recently launched a hackers' blog aggregator at http://tinkeri.ng (note the layout switcher top-right)

The thing about Tinkering is it's a place to pickup on people's passions.

It's still important to be able to think and write. You can really put yourself on the cutting edge of things. And then you can translate that into better prompts.

The more I think about it, many of the questions people ask here on HN are very much already answered through prompting. That's sort of weird. And if you want a blog post on something, just ask an AI and they'll be pulling from blog posts anyway.

The issue is "Model Collapse" and synthetic data as outlined here: https://share.gemini.google/izx1TAOuSZc5 - my questions there were actually posed here on HN beforehand https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49536605 I just went and asked C3PO about it afterward. The commenter could have done the same.

If you want to make money from it, it's definitely far harder than it used to be. Ad payout for written content is miniscule compared to that for videos or livestreams, and the decline in traffic has likely hit things like affiliate links and sponsorships pretty hard.

It's also hard to get people to visit regularly, let alone respect the time and effort that goes into writing for a site like this now. Again, people seem to have decided that influencers who make videos are just more 'valuable' than writers.

But I guess there are other reasons to run them. Writing helps you think by letting you explain your ideas more clearly, it provides a potential portfolio piece that may help things like job applications, and it's definitely possible to get attention from the right people by having a public presence like this.

It's just not really something that makes a lot of sense business wise anymore.

I used to run javascripttodaycom. Within ~3 months, it had numerous first result Google searches (something I didn't plan), and the traffic was beyond what I would have ever imagined when starting it. It eventually became the first result for "JavaScript Blog".

When LLMs gained popularity, I used them. Nonstop. My original intentions (explain things so I can understand them better) behind the blog were shattered. I wanted more readers.

(I did eventually remove or completely rewrite those LLM-generated articles).

Now, I don't know if the LLM-generated content did this, but the readership eventually dropped to single digit numbers. Granted, I did stop writing for like a year, but yeah... Why would anyone read anything on the blog when an LLM can generate the answer they're looking for in seconds? AND they can ask follow-up questions?

HN is an IT site, but technology means a more than IT. Technical can be formal or informal. Social media encapsulated informal personal interest technical blogs long before llms. Reach is always the biggest problem. Mention on HN has helped a few personal blogs, I'm sure. If somebody wants to look something up that a particular blog is good about, they can take the data and run, or be entertained by following the llm back to the source. If I want to know the amp-hours in a NiCd C-cell, I go to DDG, then the blog, and then 85% of the time I leave. The ai assisted answer credits the page" Maintaining your Batteries" which looks like it was typed on an Underwood. Walled gardens ruined search.

I still see them occasionally and read them when I can. Because the content a human has made is much more interesting than something possibly plausible but useless that an Agent could tell me. I've been working on a project that'll look at the HN new submissions and start to filter out the stuff I really don't care about (news, product announcements, stuff about LLMs), which makes technical blogs more likely to show up, then I can bookmark them for later reading

Haha bro, I came up with the same idea that I need just simple LLM-filter with my own criteria to find something interesting. You can check it there: knoless.vercel.app. Maybe you can give me some advice :)

I just filter out LLM related stuff, news pages, product releases etc by looking at the title and URL, and then look at what's left to see if I actually like the content

Yep, basically do the same thing.

Maybe there is value in another role for technical blogs: providing structured frameworks that change how an agent reasons through a problem.

An agent may understand the underlying technology, but I spend a fair bit of time working out with agents the best framework for approaching a particular problem.

A technical post could lay out various approaches, possible SOPs, and their tradeoffs. That can be useful to an agent even if it doesn’t teach it any new technical facts.

I'm searching for them harder than ever. Ironically, I have agents crawl for independent bloggers so I can add more people to my ever-growing RSS feed.

Ooh. Interesting approach! Have you considered publishing a list of those blogs somewhere?

I haven't thought about it, but it's not a bad idea! The subject matter overall is a bit eclectic, but if I value something, surely someone else who hasn't yet found it will too!

I feel much less incentivised to post publicly. The only benefit might be that I review and think more before posting than saving locally.

The downside is that now bunch of llms will read it and spill my thoughts all over without any attribution. I might be even ok with that, but now some company is making money on it, and that doesn't sit well with me.

The few technical blogs I posted, that's exactly what I imagined -- some guy would have the same problem, find my blog, and I'd save him and his company a day or two of work.

And now they're making money on it, and that sits really well with me.

but that some guy was reading your blog, so you were building a reputation and maybe a personal brand or position of authority on some subjects.

now, it's like you are working for free for gen-AI companies.

No, I wasn't building a reputation. My blog was pseudo-anonymous.

I was working for free already, when I posted the things.

Mine is and rightly so. AI will do a better job at educating you on any technical subject than I could have ever hoped for.

I can only hope my years of writing and open source code projects are useful to OpenAI otherwise it was all for nothing.

yeah this is dead for 20 percent of peoples and also AI uses our content to shows result to those 20 percent how chooses AI

I get a lot of traffic to my blog but mostly from bots.

Unless the serve for a specific reason, probably.

They’re not dead. They’re resting ;-)

It’s not dead if you actually write authentically in your own PoV.

I write mine all the time. Enough people seem to engage with it. Traffic seems fine.

I probably write less for capturing Google traffic, but instead as a signpost of something cool I worked on or learned. That I can send to people I meet as a reference. Impress my friends. Or refer to myself. Or show an agent (I often prefer writing blog articles to skills).

There’s a pretty massive competitive advantage to having your own voice that doesn’t sound like slop. IMO it’s never been a better time to be a messy, slightly unpolsihed human writing on the Web.

The incentives have disappeared. I'm old (64), and when I started out, there were printed trade publications for pretty much any discipline, that showed up in the mail, paid for by advertisers. The articles were deep and useful, because they had to respect the audiences time enough to avoid the trash bin.

The money that funded those got sucked up by ad-tech companies like Google and Facebook.

Blogging, was a low to non-profit version of the same thing. You'd direct your RSS reader to your favorite feeds, read what your "friends" wrote, and reply in the comments, etc.

The thing that happened was the audience shifted from technical people happy to deal with RSS readers, and do the work of maintaining subscriptions found the process of getting a blog going to be burdensome, and moved into the easier walled gardens.

The effort of blogging to a stand alone platform wasn't horrible, nor was writing and editing something long enough to be worth the time and consideration of the reader. To make it worth it for a blogger though, you need an audience, and the feedback cycle was slow, through Google for anyone not using an RSS reader. It was really hard to get attention enough to feel the effort was worth it.

The social networks arrived, and they offered faster feedback, and more of it, with a single mechanism to handle replies, instead of each platform having a different system, and anti-spam mechanism. When Robert Scoble gave up on blogging, that signaled the end of it for me.

A technical blog is a teaching tool, and nobody is willing to pay the teachers enough in money, or attention, to make it worth it.

One area that has bloomed though, because that's where the incentives moved, is video blogging. Here are some YouTube channels that might be interesting to you:

https://www.youtube.com/@HuygensOptics -- if you want to learn about optics

https://www.youtube.com/@EEVblog -- an opinionated Australian with one of the oldest EE focused channels

https://www.youtube.com/@CuriousMarc -- deep technical/repair videos

https://www.youtube.com/@ThinkingandTinkering -- alas, Robert Murray-Smith is no longer with us, he had many interesting things to say

https://www.youtube.com/@ThisOldTony -- Machining videos with a sense of humor

https://www.youtube.com/@smartereveryday -- an engineer who used to field test missiles learns new things all the time

https://www.youtube.com/@Blondihacks -- Canadian machinist who teaches along the way doing projects

https://www.youtube.com/@TheAmpHour -- an audio blog about electronics design

https://www.youtube.com/@Computerphile -- various topics related to computers with staff mostly from the University of Nottingham

https://www.youtube.com/@primitivetechnology9550 -- John Plant teaches by showing, how to build the most basic technology ever, he started with a rock and a stick, and worked his way up from there. Turn on subtitles, he doesn't talk, he annotates on screen, it's wonderfully quiet

https://www.youtube.com/@OCPTAP -- if you're a time nut, this is the channel for you, it's about very, very precise timing

https://www.youtube.com/@NileRed -- crazy and almost safe chemistry experiments

https://www.youtube.com/@urituchmanpigeon -- an eclectic approach to building things

https://www.youtube.com/@CaseyJones-Engineer -- an actual engineer who picks apart various things gone wrong with various current events.

https://www.youtube.com/@mrpete222 -- Mr Pete, retired shop teacher with an attitude, and a lot of things to show you how to do.

https://www.youtube.com/@PracticalEngineeringChannel -- Grady, another actual engineer, shows how infrastructure works, with practical demonstrations built in his garage, and some on-site things as well

https://www.youtube.com/@DavesGarage -- Dave Plummer, the guy who wrote task manager, and the zip file handler for Windows, talks about various things computer related

https://www.youtube.com/@AnastasiInTech -- A chip designer talks about the latest trends in chip fabrication

https://www.youtube.com/@JeffGeerling -- Things related to radio broadcasting, raspberry pi, mini-racks, gps timing, etc. His dad is a broadcast engineer.

https://www.youtube.com/@RealEngineering -- What it says on the time, breakdowns of how things actually work

https://www.youtube.com/@wgowshipping -- Sal Mercogliano, an actual mariner and Professor, discusses current events in shipping on the high seas.

https://www.youtube.com/@MentourNow -- A pilot discusses current aviation events

https://www.youtube.com/@NDC -- NDC Conferences - Interesting programming talks

https://www.youtube.com/@ZackFreedman -- Wild and crazy, the inventor of GridFinity

https://www.youtube.com/@voiceofthunder9620 -- An actual scientist, a chemist, who really, really despises Elon Musk, and sometimes plays with NaK, a liquid metal at room temperature. He might be the one who gives us a work-around for global warming

https://www.youtube.com/@NoEngineerHere -- Interesting projects, but NOT an engineer

https://www.youtube.com/@StefanGotteswinter -- a proper German doing machining projects

https://www.youtube.com/@dgelbart - Dan invented the first practical stepper, which gets used in the manufacturing of every chip ever. You really should watch his "how to make things" tutorial

https://www.youtube.com/@3blue1brown -- Grant Sanderson talks about Math, beautifully illustrated and story-told

https://www.youtube.com/@Kathy_Loves_Physics -- The real history of how physics got to where it is

https://www.youtube.com/@oxtoolco -- Recently retired from Berkeley's University machine shop, lots of practical tips related to machining very precisely

https://www.youtube.com/@TITANSofCNC -- CNC manufacturing, they offer free education in the trade

https://www.youtube.com/@Clough42 -- Machining and CNC related projects

https://www.youtube.com/@arduinoversusevil2025 -- Arduino vs Evil, an opinionated Canadian who swears a bit does various things related to machining, with a lot of tear downs of tools.

https://www.youtube.com/@WardCarroll -- Former Navy Aviator talks about current events, sometimes with Sal from What's up with Shipping (see above)

https://www.youtube.com/@tested -- Adam Savage, of Mythbusters does various builds

https://www.youtube.com/@w2aew -- Radio theory and projects

https://www.youtube.com/@AppliedScience -- Some of the coolest science projects, including things like spin coating, supercritical CO2, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/@RexKrueger -- Traditional Woodworking

https://www.youtube.com/@DylanBeattie -- Dylan is great at breaking down things that you think are simple... like "Plain Text" formatting

https://www.youtube.com/@ShakeTheFuture -- Melting metal in a microwave, so you can do home casting

https://www.youtube.com/@joepie221 -- A machinist in Austin Texas, with a lot to teach

https://www.youtube.com/@KevlinHenney -- Talks about programming

https://www.youtube.com/@GOTO- -- GOTO Conferences, programming talks

https://www.youtube.com/@essentialcraftsman -- Practical construction and blacksmithing

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