In the world of writing articles to share our knowledge, experience, learning from the community, which of the three popular developer platforms do you prefer?
All are wonderful sites and hold much value in their own ways. Each of the three have a magnificent community that could never be replaced. But if you had to choose one and only one to stick by for the rest of your developer career - to learn from, to share on, etc. - which would it be and why?
Happy coding!
Top comments (18)
We've designed DEV and Forem to be very welcoming to cross-posting, and inherently compatible with what Hashnode is and has become.
But I will say that Medium really was never the right thing for developers, and it's not getting better.
I wrote this a few years ago.
Medium Was Never Meant to Be a Part of the Developer Ecosystem
Ben Halpern for The DEV Team ・ Jun 3 '19 ・ 5 min read
This was before we'd gotten Forem going and gotten to where we are now where DEV is not only a great gathering place, but doesn't have to be all things to all people because of the work we do to enable stuff like Wasm Builders, MetaPunk, etc. But the ideas still stand. I really don't think Medium was ever great at serving the needs of developers or communities in general.
Yeah, I've recently loved using the RSS import feature since I'm primarily using Hashnode for simplicity of maintaining one source, but I don't want to neglect the DEV ecosystem. Great best of both worlds solution imo:
Re-Syndicate Hashnode to DEV the Easy Way
Eamonn Cottrell ・ Mar 30 ・ 4 min read
As someone who has set up crossposting from my Hashnode powered personal site and DEV; it was very easy, thank you!
I'm glad I don't have to choose, but if I did have to I would go with DEV. The community and conversation overall seems better to me. Not to mention I get like 10x the engagement from DEV than Hashnode...
Strongly agree and the integrations between Dev.to and Hashnode and great. Use the post importer quite consistently.
I'm on the fence for Medium. I've engaged with quite a few great people but it feels like what you said holds true. Its a catch-all system and I'm quite tired of the listcles that seem to be more common in that environment. (Not to mention the paywall)
I will probably continue to post to Medium until my subscription runs out and stop there.
I actually wrote like a year ago a comparison between the three to help people choose:
dev.to/shahednasser/dev-vs-hashnod...
I personally think dev is the best because it gives a chance for everyone. On Hashnode and Medium the articles that get seen are generally articles by popular bloggers or publications. On dev even if it’s your first post you get a chance to be seen on the home page by everyone.
I strongly agree with this!
I would also pick Dev.to, because I recently usually have read on Dev.to or Medium, but Medium feels less like a place, where you do not need to make great articles in order to be accepted. But I do not write there and can totally be wrong with this! Regarding Hashnode, I did not read there a lot.
On Dev.to also beginners are very welcome with their writings!
Medium couldn't decide what it was. I was only interested in coding but found just 30% of articles interesting and about coding. The rest were sagas of personal world views. I stopped reading anything there 3 years ago. Dev.to is #1 in my mind.
Hashnode interface is more elegant and easy on the eye to read.
I'm still on Dev.to because it support opensource and Hashnode is closed source from what I saw. Also Hashnode business model is not clear to me.
I wish Dev.to could overhaul its interface to be more Medium/Hashnode like, or at least give the user a choice to change and update it theme.
Medium paywall is awful. And no syntax highlighting is a deal breaker.
I wonder if I can automate cross posting to all and setup CANONICAL URL properly so that SEO score / search-
engine ranking is not affected.
I never knew that dev.to could be combined with an external RSS feed.
Thank you for informing me about it. :)
Why pick. I have all 3 and a few others. I use canonical to refer to the one where I post the first article. I can't force my audience to pick nor should I.
Dev.to
dev.to
I don’t even use the other two!