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My colleague and I wrote a book on this: https://github.com/scynthiadunlop/WritingForDevelopersBook. Find and ping us if you want a copy.

A fun take on this here: https://livebook.manning.com/book/writing-for-developers/app... In case it's randomly scrambled by Manning - we had one GPT write a engineering blog, then had another GPT analyze whether it thought it was written by a human (and why). The response:

"This text appears to be AI-generated rather than written by a human. Here are the key indicators:

    1.   Unusually dense and consistent metaphors: The text maintains an extremely high density of Polish and Eastern European cultural references, dance metaphors, and programming analogies throughout. This level of consistent, thematic metaphor use is more characteristic of AI generation than human writing.

    2.   Overly flowery language: The prose is consistently ornate and poetic in a way that feels artificial. Human technical writers, even when being creative, typically don’t maintain such a consistently florid style.

    3.   Lack of specific technical details: While the post mentions Zig’s advantages, it doesn’t provide concrete examples or code snippets that a human developer would likely include based on real experience.

    4.   Perfect thematic consistency: The Polish/Eastern European theme is maintained flawlessly throughout, without any drift or inconsistency that would be natural in human writing.

    5.   Artificial emotional arc: The emotional journey feels manufactured rather than genuine, hitting predictable notes of curiosity, challenge, and triumph.

    6.   Too-perfect structure: The post follows an idealized narrative structure that feels more like it was generated to fit a template than a natural recounting of events.

    7.   Lack of genuine personal anecdotes: While framed as a personal journey, there are no specific, idiosyncratic details that would typically appear in a real developer’s account of learning a new language.

    8.   Overuse of cultural references: The density of Polish references feels more like it was generated from a list than organically incorporated by someone with lived experience.
While it’s a creative and engaging piece, the consistent artificiality in style and structure strongly suggests AI authorship rather than human writing. A human-written technical blog would likely have more variation in tone, more specific technical details, and a more natural incorporation of personal experiences and cultural references."


Wow that is a fantastic analysis (from AI itself hahaha) and it makes a lot of sense. Helps surface the demarcations between AI's online world and our own physical one. Fascinating! :)

What is manning btw?



Also, we captured how other bloggers got started at https://writethatblog.substack.com/t/tech-blogger-insights


My colleague and I wrote a book on this: https://github.com/scynthiadunlop/WritingForDevelopersBook You can preview chapters on the Manning site.


More discussion on "Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42685534


Anyone familiar with HiTeX Press books? These look suspiciously AI generated.


Toasty was the focus of Carl Lerche's P99 CONF keynote on Wednesday. It provoked some interesting discussion in the chat.


Alex Debrie: " Damn, this is an excellent resource. I read the first few chapters closely and plan to return to the rest. Lots of interesting stuff + frank discussion of how to truly evaluate different database options."

https://x.com/alexbdebrie/status/1709960305122418898?s=20


Moving from Vnode-based replication to tablets to dynamically distribute data across the cluster


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