In past weeks, Dumebi Okolo asked in this post:
"Is it just me, or has anyone noticed that articles on dev.to don't get as many reads/views as they used to before?"
Yes! On dev.to, Medium, and on the Internet overall.
There's no point in writing how-to tutorials anymore, unless you're starting your coding or writing journey with TIL posts.
For step-by-step guidance on coding tasks, there's a magical text-area that seems to understands you and spits out answers fast.
Less people are landing on blogs and tutorials after Google pushed instant answers. For a couple of years, my series on unit testing and LINQ drove the most traffic to my blog and to my dev.to posts. Even, I went "viral" here on dev.to with a a post on unit testing private methods. These days, they barely have any traffic.
And when was the last time you Google or open StackOverflow when stuck? Your behavior as reader tells a lot about what to do as a writer.
Is there still market for tech content? Yes.
But we have to give what AI can't. Thoughts, rants, stories...Authenticity. That's how to stand out in a sea of AI slop.
It's not a surprise that my most popular recent "technical" posts are hard truths nobody told me about coding and the most painful lesson from my best job.
If AI can do it in minutes, it isn't special.
If you're starting out your coding journey, I still recommend you to write online. That's one of the lessons I cover in Street-Smart Coding—The roadmap I wish I had when I started.
