Matt Rickard, yes this Matt Rickard from episode #463 of The Changelog, shared some thoughts (an unordered list) about the forces acting on RSS.

He sets the stage by sharing a swath of think pieces written on the subject.

No technology other than RSS has had more think pieces written proclaiming the death of RSS (2006, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013) and the rebirth of RSS (2009, 2010, 2011, 2018, 2018, 2019).

Here are two points (of several shared) that stood out to me.

Substack has revitalized the blogging movement by giving away free hosting and email lists, and a business model for supporting writers. As email newsletters grow, RSS is a decent alternative to an increasingly cluttered email inbox.

Creator incentives work against RSS. The protocol does not benefit content creators because it doesn’t give them any insight into their audience (number of subscribers, emails, or other data).

What are your thoughts in his thoughts? What’s next for RSS?

Matt Rickard shares 31 reflections after putting his time 10k hours in programming:

These are reflections only about pure coding — no lessons sum up to “programming is about people” or “how to be a senior technical leader” (arguably more important to a career, but not the topic of this post).

These reflections are just about deliberately writing code for 10,000 hours. Most don’t apply to beginners. These reflections are not career advice. Think of them as lessons on being a technical guitarist, not about being a good band member. They are about becoming a better programmer for yourself.

Here’s the first one, just to whet your whistle:

Browsing the source is almost always faster than finding an answer on StackOverflow.