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Cover image for How do you approach your DEV "Reading List"?
Ruben Sanchez
Ruben Sanchez

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How do you approach your DEV "Reading List"?

I have noticed that when faced with articles that are either long, or likely to be useful in the future, people tend to add them to their reading list.

I am curious about how do you use this list. Do you set a time during the week when you go through it and read what you have saved during the last days?

Do you use it as a sort of library, where you can go and search for answers on interesting topics whenever the need comes?

Personally, I am guilty of saving cool stuff in my reading list but then never going back to it, so I am looking for tips on how to optimize this behavior and take advantage of the awesome content I save.

Me, searching for that cool Python article I saw last week

Top comments (9)

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avalander profile image
Avalander

I'm ashamed to admit this, but my strategy is adding articles to my reading list and forgetting about them.

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rhymes profile image
rhymes

don't be, any strategy is fine :-)

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rubenwap profile image
Ruben Sanchez

I am happy to see that I am not alone when doing that! 😅

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thewhitewulfy profile image
Alok Prateek

Well, I've always had a different strategy - I usually bookmark articles in dev.to which are either long or I cannot read them when I find it. I usually give one day a month to read them. For articles I will refer to I save them in browser bookmarks. Though I would love to see atleast ability to group saved articles into collections.

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patarapolw profile image
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt

Without a searching API, bookmarks are like drowning. Dev.to should expose a searchable API which might be Swagger or GraphQL.

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daveparr profile image
Dave Parr

They actually have an API, however I don't think it exposes the readinglist unfortunately. I think that would be neat, as then I could read the articles on my e-reader via pocket. Maybe that can be achieved via webhooks though? I'm not certain.

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darthwalsh profile image
Carl Walsh

Thanks! The API now seems to have a read-only readinglist: docs.forem.com/api/#operation/getR...

dev.to/api/readinglist

Maybe I can build a tasker automation around this...

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rhymes profile image
rhymes

I used to be a "reading list inbox zero" person, the lockdown made that 0 levitate to 240+ items. I'll catch up :D

I do not keep items that I've already read in the reading list. I read an item, I take it out. Simple as that. If I need to save something for long term I use the browser bookmarks, nothing fancier than that.

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rubenwap profile image
Ruben Sanchez

I wonder if the people who are saving this article into their reading list are doing so ironically 😁