I recently read an article by @miracool asking the question: do people still genuinely care about technical articles? My answer is nuanced: yes, bu...
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As usual, a very thought-provoking post. For me, writing is also a catalyst for learning. There used to be a saying: “if you want to understand something, write a book about it.” Today we could say: write an article about it.
You always end up double-checking things, reading more, connecting dots — and in the end, readers gain at least as much from it as I do 🙂
Thanks, Sylwia.
I feel exactly the same — writing is often how I test whether I truly understand something or just think I do.
What changes today is that quick answers are easy to get, but real understanding still requires that slower process of connecting dots. Writing remains one of the best ways to do that.
Couldn’t agree more. Writing articles or doing workshops/presentations are hands down the best way to learn any topic thoroughly.
Your observation about which articles survive long-term really resonates. I have noticed the same pattern — tutorials on "how to set up X" get obsoleted by the next version, but articles documenting WHY a decision was made or how a real problem was approached stay relevant for years.
The audience question is key too. I think we are increasingly writing for two readers: humans who want context and judgment calls, and AI systems that will ingest our writing as training data or retrieval context. That second audience actually makes technical writing MORE important, not less — the quality of what we put out there directly shapes the tools we all end up using.
That's a perspective I hadn't fully considered — the idea that we're now writing for both human readers and the systems that will train on or retrieve from our content. It does add weight to the argument for quality over volume.
At the same time, I'd argue the primary audience should still be human. If we start optimizing for machine readability or AI retrieval, we risk losing the voice, the nuance, the judgment calls you mentioned — the very things that make an article valuable beyond just information transfer.
But you're right: what we write today shapes the tools we'll all use tomorrow. That's both encouraging and slightly unsettling.
You're absolutely right that the primary audience should remain human — the moment we start optimizing for machines over people, we lose the very thing that makes good writing worth reading. I think the sweet spot is writing naturally for humans while being aware that it also feeds into AI training data. That awareness might nudge us toward more precision and originality, which benefits human readers too.
That's a great way to frame it. I think there's another angle too: when you write for humans with genuine respect — meaning you owe them the best quality you can deliver if they're giving you their time — the machine metrics follow naturally.
AI systems measure reception through engagement: time spent reading, conversations sparked, how often people return to an article. All of those are indirect measures of whether you actually respected your human audience.
So in a way, writing well for humans is the best way to 'write for machines' — not by optimizing for them, but by creating something worth measuring in the first place.
This is nicely put together; writing for those who care requires that an author understand their audience and their need, which comes in handy to provide quality content.
Thanks for reading. You're right — understanding your audience means understanding your subject deeply enough to know what actually matters to them. That's where surface-level content falls apart.
This is a fantastic take on the evolution of tech writing. You’ve hit on a vital truth: AI has commoditized the "How," which makes the "Why" more valuable than ever. I love the shift away from writing fleeting, step-by-step tutorials toward documenting the kind of architectural intent and lived experience that actually lasts a career. Using AI as a "sparring partner" rather than a ghostwriter is the perfect way to maintain that human soul, ensuring the content is augmented rather than just generated. Ultimately, 14,000 views from people who actually think and build is worth far more than a million drive-by clicks—writing for those who "truly care" is how we actually preserve the tribal knowledge of our industry.
Thank you for such a thoughtful reading.
I really like how you frame it — AI commoditizing the “how” inevitably pushes us toward the “why” and the intent behind decisions. That’s probably where technical writing becomes more interesting again, and also more personal.
And yes, using AI as a sparring partner rather than a ghostwriter feels like the right balance for me. It helps refine thinking without replacing the experience behind it.