Hardscrabble 🍫

It keeps happening. I come across a blog which has written something interesting enough and I try to subscribe to it in my RSS Reader app¹ and the app tells me there’s no feed to subscribe to.

Maybe I should have compiled a few examples before writing this. I have one at the moment. Consider https://cursor.com/blog.

This is the blog for Cursor, which I understand to be a popular and influential fork of Visual Studio Code that adds lots of AI code generation features. I haven’t used it but I’ve heard that people like it.

They’re blogging about where they think things are going in the world of programming, which I’m interested in. But there’s no feed to subscribe to, so I’ll probably miss their future posts.

OK here’s one more: https://fabro.sh/blog – this is another AI tool, created by my old boss from Code Climate, Bryan Helmkamp. I’m curious about what he’s up to and where this will go, so I’d happily subscribe and hear future updates. But there’s no feed.

I have two theories on what might be happening here:

1. Skipping the RSS feed is a status symbol. A flex. They’re saying, “we don’t need one. We know that what we have to say is so obviously compelling that whenever we speak, our words will echo across the land across social media, coverage on other blogs and news aggregators, etc. We just can’t be bothered.”
2. They’re using AI to build their websites, and whatever prompt they’re using doesn’t mention an RSS feed, so the generated website doesn’t have one. Back when people were using off the shelf software like Wordpress to power their blogs, they’d have RSS feeds because all Wordpress websites automatically get one.

Whatever the reason: it sucks. Add an RSS feed.