Well, shit.
I wrote my first blog post in this space on December 27th, 2015 — almost exactly a decade ago.
I had just left Facebook, hadn’t yet formally incorporated Honeycomb, and it just felt like it was time, long past time for me to put something up and start writing.
Ten years later, it feels long past time for me to do something else. I despise WP (who doesn’t?), and there’s so much friction in getting a post out that I just don’t do it. Plus, it’s clear that to the extent that there is a vibrant ecosystem of tech writers in longform, it’s on substack. I miss tech twitter, always will. Time to give substack a try.
I’ve been working on the second edition of “Observability Engineering” for much of this year, and I have learned SO MUCH in the writing process. As soon as these rough drafts have all been turned in, I will be streaming my thoughts out via substack. They are burning a hole in my brain the longer I hold them in.
Housekeeping notes:
- I’ve tried to export the email subscribers and import them into substack, but it’s held up for manual review. I don’t know what that means.
- I won’t be able to export and bring along the comments you folks have left over the years. I’m sorry. 🙁
- I am going to leave charity.wtf pointed here for the foreseeable future, even tho I am working to port over the corpus of posts. I don’t want to break anyone’s bookmarks or article links, so I’ll leave it up here until / unless I find a solution.
If you want to go subscribe, I’m at charitydotwtf.substack.com. Here’s the blurb:
Thank you all for a wonderful 10 years together. WordPress may be a piece of shit, but the community I’ve found here has been anything but. I hope to see you on the other side.
💜💙💚💛🧡❤️💖
charity
Congrats charity and welcome to substack 😁😁😁
I heard that Substack is actually becoming more medium like, I personally ended up moving to Jekyll where all my content is now markdown in a Git repo so I now own the whole stack – here is my journey
https://ssmusoke.com/2025/07/04/personal-blog-journey-from-wordpress-to-jekyll/
thanks for the link!
Might be worth adding the RSS feed link https://charitydotwtf.substack.com/feed for those (like me) who are still using that and prefer it to email subscriptions.
indeed, thanks for the note.
Hasn’t anybody told you that Substack platforms neo-Nazis?
Why are you moving to the Nazi platform?
I suggest you reconsider moving to Substack! Get any open source blog solution and self-host. It’s probably way more work but Substack is turning awful and has dubious ownership.
Reconsidering.
https://leavesubstack.com/
I know it’s a pain in the ass to change platforms, and the presumed critical mass of tech writers on Substack is appealing for built-in community; but I hope you’ll consider alternatives that aren’t Nazi supporters.
I am considering this. Am investigating, having some discussions, and will circle back soon with a decision.
ah, sorry to see you go there. substack’s ethos is against my values.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/substacks-nazi-problem-wont-go-away-after-push-notification-apology/
hopefully your next move after them is to someplace more ethical.
Heard. I’m trying to figure out the right thing to do here; I’ll let you all know when I’ve decided.
Added to RSS reader. See you there 😀
I turn to Hugo instead, looking for the simplest accessible medium I can get, with a git repo as a fallback.
Are you aware of ghost.org? I don’t blog myself, but I’ve heard the user experience is comparable to Substack, while allowing you independent control of your audience management (newsletters, subscriptions, etc) instead of being part of Substack’s “platform” and being subject to their policies and any eventual business model shifts.
Thanks for the note. The main thing I am looking to accomplish is to rejoin the mainstream of technical discussion, which seems to be divvied up between LinkedIn, X, and Substack. X is a bridge too far for me; LI and substack each have their issues, but I have a job to do. 😕
As a long-time fan of yours, and someone who also happens to be the author of https://leavesubstack.com with a lot of curated resources on their problematic history, I hope you’ll reconsider before you get too far into it. The site also provides other alternatives for your consideration.
Thanks for the thoughtful response (but damn you for that useful blog of yours, I just read thru most of the first 13 pages of posts and am now setting up any2k.com on my own kindle. I’m supposed to be writing!).
I have a job to do. Going dark on social media these past few years has been lovely from a personal perspective, but an abdication of my professional responsibilities. X has a diminished tech scene but still dominates the share of voice, however it really is a Nazi free-for-all. Bluesky is ineffective, LinkedIn is smarmy and sales-drenched, wordpress and other self-hosted options are…better than nothing, I guess.
I have decided to experiment with Substack and Linkedin for a while to lower the barrier of publishing and make it easier to be in conversation with other technologists. But I hear you, and a few other people who have complained. I’m reading everything people send me, and doing my own research, and sleeping on it. I’ll let y’all know where I end up in a day or two, before investing anything more into Substack.
Appreciate your comment.
That’s all I can ask! 👍 Thank you as always for the thoughtful responses and engagement. My words (on both my comment and blog!) are honored that you’ve seen them. 🙂 I agree it’s really hard to balance the job with the current media landscape and it’s hard to necessarily know what alternatives might be out there. I’ll miss following your writing if you move to Substack, but continue to wish you the best whatever platform you’re on.
Sean, would you mind if I drop you an email? (nm, already sent 😉)
Nothing to add other than what’s been pointed out, jplease not Subtack 🙏🏻