Repetition - too much of the same
Tags: blogging, reflection, writing, reading
Published: 2021-01-12 09:53:43

Here's a bit of a rant, from thoughts over the last month or so.

I am getting worn down by the repetition of blog topics, especially on dev.to. This sometimes makes me reluctant to open up my feed or to skip over posts that look unoriginal.

A colleague who is a regular blogger has echoed my sentiments, so I know it's not just me.

## Lack of variety in post content

People seem to like writing about the same topics without bringing originality. Like posts on VS Code Themes and top 10 VS Code extensions. See this [search](https://dev.to/search?q=Vs%20code%20extensions&filters=class_name:Article).

Or top 50 repos or APIs or resources. These seem to more common recently. 

e.g. [FREE} Ultimate Resources for Front-End Development in 2021 + Giveaway⚡](https://dev.to/rahxuls/free-ultimate-resources-for-front-end-development-in-2021-giveaway-3838) with about over 2000 likes. Or [50 free tools and resources you're gonna love (Part 2)](https://denic.hashnode.dev/50-free-tools-and-resources-part-2)

Maybe there's some gold in there but I don't know if I have concentration to look through all 50 on the list with proper attention. 

Or intro to git, or JavaScript basics, or intro Deno (the articles don't offer much info beyond what is on the Deno docs or blog). 

Or how they went from newbie to junior programmer in so many months. I am glad there are so many success stories but less there is little appeal for me in reading an article targeted at people who haven't started a developer yet. The ones on how to ace your interview are perhaps more useful in practical advice to follow rather than inspiration.

In fact, when I see a post that looks very much like a duplicate but I can see differences between them, I comment with link back to the previous article I read, so that the recent post author can benefit from the content and comments. And also for anyone browsing to be able to compare the facts and opinions in the two articles.

Often dev.to posts are "beginners writing for beginners", as my colleague aptly put it. 

I mean, I do like having a platform where anyone can bring their views and experience and there are plenty of articles aimed at beginners if I do need to learn something. It just can make it harder to find the higher quality articles. 

The same goes for finding websites - since anyone can make their own blog. And the same goes for trying to find a professional photo or photographer in a world of mostly amateur photographers.

The repetition of beginner articles gets to me when searching online for _intermediate_ use of a tool or language. For example, I have read posts on using Python to get tweets from the Twitter API or how to scrape or visualize data. They usually spend a large chunk of the article going over the basics as if someone had never used Python before. They could rather just link to an external article or docs on how to setup Python on your machine and what a virtual environment and packages are. Some people split the article into parts, where the 1st section covers language fundamentals and then 2nd section is the real heart of the article which is unique, so I like that.

## Popular posts

I usually enjoy reading the more popular posts on dev.to (based on emojis and comments) than a random post in my feed. (Having said that, I've also seen some amazing posts with just a few likes and they deserve way more attention). I also trust or weigh the advice more heavily from someone with decades of varied experience vs someone who just discovered a tool or passed their first coding course.

## Popular bloggers

I like to follow a respected blogger like [Flavio Copes](https://flaviocopes.com/), [Martin Fowler](https://martinfowler.com/) or [Uncle Bob](http://cleancoder.com). The last guy I particularly enjoy - on Youtube he talks about principles which make sense for 1980s as well as the future. 

## Topic subscriptions

I've already updated my subscribed topics but that didn't help enough. I've just discovered I can adjust the weighting of my feed, so I'm going to try that too.

- https://dev.to/dashboard/following_tags

But a topic like `#webdev` is still very broad so I could get anything in there.

## Images

A gripe on images - I love using Unsplash for the stock images, but it gets annoying to see the exact same stock images coming up in use on dev.to and medium.com. Maybe it just bothers me and no one else notices or cares about the lack of originality? Are people just picking the popular images at the top of the "coding" and "programming" search results.