Reflecting on One Hundred Thousand Reads

A thank-you, and where the reads come from.

This site just passed one hundred thousand reads. It began as a notebook kept in public, read by almost no one, and the idea hasn’t changed: one well-made post a month, not quick writeups—only deep dives into things that genuinely interest me. So to everyone who has read one: thank you; that is what matters, the rest is just numbers.

The numbers are uneven. Visitors tend to stay—five and a half minutes on average—but where they come from is the surprise: Reddit and Hacker News send nearly 90% of readers, every search engine under 5%.

Two sites, most of it. Reddit and Hacker News send nearly nine in ten readers; every search engine put together sends under one in twenty.

reddit69%

hacker news20%

search engines<5%

others6%

And that is fragile. This traffic spikes, then fades—a post hits a front page, pulls a few thousand reads in a day, then goes quiet; the three most-read owe their 40,000-odd reads to a few such days, not steady interest.¹ ¹ Optimizing a Lock-Free Ring Buffer leads with 16,635 reads, followed by the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus (12,506) and Devirtualization and Static Polymorphism (11,848). Search is the opposite: tiny now, but it grows over time, so the deeper posts are being set up to show up there—and each new one is syndicated more widely.

Thank you, again, for reading.

My mailing list is free, occasional, and covers a variety of topics. I will never sell or share your email address.

Have feedback? Email me at david@alvarezrosa.com.

Subscribe§