Bulletin report (2022)

Published on by Arnau Siches

Table of contents

This report summarises the publication of the bulletin in 2022.

An attempt to draw some insights from the publication of the weekly bulletins in 2022. See also previous years:

As usual, let's start with some general numbers to frame the rest of the report. This year I'll pull in numbers from las year as well to compare.

title20212022
Number of resources read1101639
Number of resources published306306
Number of sources3353
Number of sources not used1427

This year I read substantially less than previous years likely due to changing jobs. I didn't realise I added 20 new sources to my weekly routine, I should do some pruning, it's getting wild.

The numbers per week have dropped as expected although the maximum stays quite the same.

metric20212022
week count52.051.0
mean21.212.5
std7.26.2
min9.05.0
25%16.08.0
50%20.512.0
75%24.214.5
max44.043.0

# Resources

I believe all web resources should be accessible via HTTPS so whenever I find a URL using HTTP, I manualy change it to HTTPS. It turns out that some places are either not publishing in HTTPS or doing so but neglecting it (e.g. expired or untrusted certificates). This is the split of resources by either HTTP or HTTPS.

title20212022
Number of resources read using HTTPS1088632
Number of resources published using HTTPS305304
Number of resources read using HTTP137
Number of resources published using HTTP12

Year after year some resources persist in not offering HTTPS. Patience.

# Sources

My regular sources are where I find most of my readings. These are the top 10 sources and the total resources I found thanks to them. Notice that this year “webtoolsweekly” didn't make the cut and instead “family” got in.

source20212022
lobsters218146
twitter136133
tldr5145
weekrust7028
work8327
friend2020
family1719
dataelixir5914
github2213
softwareleadweekly2712

In contrast with the top 10 sources for resources I chose for the bulletins:

source20212022
lobsters6972
twitter3259
tldr2524
work1413
weekrust1011
github1210
friend610
dataelixir218
webtoolsweekly128
family87

The sources mostly maintain the order from 2021. Next year this will change given that I stopped using Twitter in favour of Mastodon.

Similar to 2021, I read a few articles from “softwareleadweekly” but only a couple got into the bulletin.

Another way of thinking about sources is to look at how often domains repeat. It's a weird one though given that a single domain doesn't necessarily equate to a single publisher. Good examples of this are github.com, youtube.com or medium.com. In any case, see below the list of domains I read more than 4 times:

domaintotal
github.com128
medium.com12
dev.to8
blog.logrocket.com6

In contrast, these are the top 10 domains from resources published in the bulletin:

domain20212022
github.com6187
www.youtube.com24
www.joshwcomeau.com03
notes.eatonphil.com03
fly.io03
ncase.me02
medium.com22
github.blog02
dev.to42
christine.website02

GitHub stays as the dominant domain which is not a surprise, most times I share an interesting tool I use their repository which is rarely not in GitHub. The rest is mostly disjoint with last year which again is what I would expect given the diversity of domains people use to publish resources.

# Topics

Once I read an article I tag it with a set of tags that I think represent the topic of the article. The top 10 tags are:

tag20212022
rust188151
tool12591
web9964
data9854
database4450
sqlite2743
software_development4842
javascript5540
webassembly6139
management5132

And the top 10 that where published in the bulletin:

tag20212022
rust4472
tool6062
database2133
data2432
web3931
sqlite1431
javascript2423
software_development1520
typescript718
python1818

Rust stays as my main interest, tools over other kinds of resources as well and there is a noticeable shift from API to databases, SQLite in particular. Interestingly enough, my curated list of SQLite resources, Some SQLite hasn't grown faster than in 2021.

For a second year, WebAssembly doesn't show often enough in the bulletin although it has been, with Rust, my main foucus for years.

Link rot is the phenomenon of URLs ceasing to point to their originally targeted resource due to that resource being relocated to a new address or becoming permanently unavailable.

yeartotal
202010
20215
20224
rot_kindtotal
unavailable5
security_issue5
domain_change3
permanent_redirect6
  • unavailable means the domain is no longer available and I couldn't find another place with the resource.
  • security_issue means there is some sort of issue with the TLS certificate, probably it's expired.
  • domain_change means the domain is no longer available but I found the resource in a new domain.
  • permanent_redirect means the resource was no longer in the expected URL but I found a different URL with the same domain.

Out of 918 (306 resources per year), 19 have been neglected with 5 no longer working at all and 5 being in question.

Although the rot is not massive, it's evidence of how naive was the idea of URLs being permanent identifiers forever. Forever is a long time.

The good news is that I recovered 9 links which are now updated in the website version of the bulletin.

# Conclusions

In 2020 I thought I would record more information so I could answer:

  • How often do I find a resource and leave it for a while to read?
  • When so, how long does it take for me from finding it to reading it?
  • Is there any impact on my reading habits when I'm on leave?

For a second year in a row, I haven't managed to incorporate enough information to address them. Maybe 2023 is the year?

Changing jobs has made a big impact on the bulletin. I had less time for reading or I was too tired to do so, and the context change has influenced the kind of resources I foucus on. 2021 was orbiting around data standards, API design and alike however 2022 has been about software development, distributed systems, and databases.

My personal interests, however, have remained roughly unchanged: Rust, offline-first tooling and WebAssembly.