Top Ten Articles of 2021

From The Pragmatic Programmers on Medium

The Pragmatic Bookshelf started sharing short-form articles with Medium readers in May of 2021. We’ve had an interesting journey trying topics to see what resonates with you, our readers. Here are the ten most viewed articles since inception. Enjoy!

Number Ten

Trying Out the Rust Bevy Engine by Herbert Wolverson

Logo for The Bevy Engine

Number Nine

It’s Just Artificial Intelligence: What’s Different Now by Eric Redmond

Cover of PragPub magazine September 2019

Number Eight

Hacks: Your Boss Is Not Your Friend by Kenneth Kousen

Photograph by Jake Giles Netter/HBO Max. Tips are based on Help Your Boss Help You.

Number Seven

Configuring Vim to Develop Go Programs by Ricardo Gerardi

Gopher image by Renee French, licensed under Creative Commons 3.0 Attributions license.

Number Six

Understanding LiveView Navigation by Sophie DeBenedetto

Image from the cover of Programming Phoenix LiveView

Number Five

Older Employees and Younger Managers by Kenneth Kousen

Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash. Tips are based on Help Your Boss Help You.

Number Four

It’s Just Artificial Intelligence: The Kobayashi Maru by Eric Redmond

Cover of PragPub magazine October 2019

Number Three

Five Steps to Guaranteed Creativity by Andy Hunt

Mind map by Andy Hunt

Number Two

Two Messages to Give Your Manager by Kenneth Kousen

Image from depositphotos.com. Tips are based on Help Your Boss Help You.

Number One

Game Development with Rust by Herbert Wolverson

An RG3D scene from Rusty Shooter courtesy of mrDIMAS. Herbert has two Rust books.

Wrapping Up

I’ve listed the articles simply by the number of views. The top article has nearly 14,000 views, while number ten has 3,700. Both one and ten are articles by Herbert Wolverson on Rust-related topics. Ken Kousen has the most top ten articles with three on the list. Ken wrote regularly from May to November, and the consistency paid off in views. Two articles from the archives of PragPub also made the list, both by Eric Redmond, and both on the topic of artificial intelligence.

So what were the notable factors of top articles? Technical topics of current interest did well, like Rust, Elixir, and artificial intelligence. Soft skills topics garnered a multitude of views. Finally, authors who wrote consistently — at least one article a month — amassed more views and had more articles chosen for further distribution by the ever-mysterious Medium algorithms.

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