Newsletters are a good way to catch up on various topics. Which newsletters do you subscribe to?
My list:
- The Morning Paper - Acolyer summarizes an academic paper in CS everyday. Topics range from ML to operating systems to scalability to software engineering. He covers breakout papers from recent conferences as well as old classics. The newsletter takes a break during summer and winter (just like university!)
- Daily Coding Problem - A coding problem everyday. Occasionally, tips on solving problems.
- Discoverdev Weekly curation of interesting articles in programming and data science
- Farnam Street Brain Food Newsletter - Weekly newsletter on mental models, problem solving approaches of famous people, productivity tips
- The Exponential View - A good weekly overview of tech news. A lot of focus on how AI and automation affects culture
- Rendezvous - Focused on web development with content for beginners and experienced devs
- Ben Horowitz's Newsletter - A VC's weekly take on tech news
Language Specific Newsletters:
Pycoders (Python) - Weekly coverage of new articles and featured libraries in Python ecosystem
This Week in Rust(Rust) - Weekly updates on key changes to Rust, state of various RFCs, featured crates and aggregated blog posts
Top comments (16)
I mostly subscribe to RSS Feeds nowadays but here's the few newsletters I still have, or my favorite RSS feeds which have newsletters:
And now a few non-technical newsletters that I love, since I firmly believe that people that work in tech should be aware of the world around them:
I read some articles from Nautilus, Aeon and Atlas Obscura. Quanta magazine is nice too for great stories on Math, Physics ans CS research.
Quanta is also good! Thanks for the reminder, I should add that to my Feedly.
I had seen all of them from time to time on HN/lobste.rs and finally decided I should just start tracking them myself via RSS :P
I have mostly stopped reading newsletters. I resorted to RSS feeds instead. They are never caught by my mail filters and they don't clog my inbox - and the sorting mechanisms of good RSS readers are fantastic.
My subscriptions change multiple times a week though.
I used Google Reader before. I use newsletters as a curation mechanism. Which RSS reader do you use?
I use NewsBlur. If you prefer a locally installed one, you should try Newsboat.
One advantage of getting newsletters is that your mail is generally always open in browser. So it is one less app you need to worry about. Also, many newsletters do provide an RSS feed.
All websites provide an RSS feed. (You can make them if they don't.) Not all websites provide a newsletter.
Having a browser open all the time just to read information is not always desirable.
The objective of a newsletter is not to cover every article on every website. Rather, it is curation of content.
That said, I agree that browser is not always best way to consume content. As you said earlier, RSS is flexible, so you can create RSS feeds of newsletters. That way, you can have the best of both worlds.
IMO, RSS reader requires an initial setup cost and many people get quickly overwhelmed by the number of unread articles unless they invest some time in setting up good filtering rules.
So does a newsletter though - and maintaining them can easily become a horrible task. You'll need to hope that "Unsubscribe" works...
Yes, subscribing to too many newsletters is counter-productive. If "Unsubscribe" does not work, the last resort is "Report Spam". There is also the possibility of people harvesting email addresses for spamming.
That won't happen with RSS! ;-)
Wait till everyone is on the SPA bandwagon :P
I have been trying to cut back, but I went through every comment and regressed.
If I was going to add some suggestions, then I'd go for the easiest ones to read/enjoy:
CSS Animation Weekly
UI Animation Newsletter
BizarroDevs: weird tech stuff.
Great discussion! I'm always on the lookout for more good newsletters.
Brainpickings - non-tech but always thoughtful and interesting
Orbital Operations - a non-technical but technology-oriented author's news. comic stuff, writing stuff, but also very often tech-related thoughts from someone adjacent to the field
Huit Denim - small denim company that puts together an outstanding, inspiring newsletter. Their motto: Do one thing well
Jocelyn K. Glei - newsletter on creativity and productivity
Three Weeks - interestingly curated link dump
So far, I’ve had no complaints - another interestingly curated link dump
Actual tech-related newsletters:
Offscreen Dispatch
Front End Focus
Pony Foo Weekly
JavaScript Weekly
Ruby Weekly
A11y Weekly
The Recompiler
rendezvous with cassidoo
Great links! I sometimes visit Brain Pickings to see how famous authors, composers and poets manage to produce great works consistently.
Increment is similar to Recompiler. They have a quarterly issue focusing on a particular aspect of programming. The latest one was on documentation.