Comments on: Five years to overnight success

By: Vikram

Vikram — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 13:33:12 +0000

Congrats and keep up the awesome work!
Always learn something new every time I visit here

By: Diane

Diane — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 01:29:12 +0000

I found your blog about a year ago when I was having numerical problems in an MCMC algorithm I wrote. When I google “numerical underflow” the first hit I get is some very good advice that you wrote. That led me to your blog, where I found more great advice but also fascinating discussions about statistics which eventually led me to teach a class on controversial statistics (students are even required to discuss their thoughts online in a class blog). I’m looking at your blog again today to get reading material about irreproducible results. Thanks!

By: Tom Hendrix

Tom Hendrix — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 20:14:33 +0000

Thanks for your excellent blog. I can’t remember how I found you – probably searching for some topic you have touched on. I enjoy the mixture of topics and appreciate your concise style.

By: Mark Galassi

Mark Galassi — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 16:40:35 +0000

John, thank you for your blog. I read almost every article in it with care and I find them well-chosen and well-reasoned. I like both the programming reflections and the mathematical articles.

You seem to have a real talent for choosing a “blog-sized” topic to discuss.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 21:56:45 +0000

John, I started reading your blog after someone recommended it on HN.
Been reading ever since.

By: Rick Wicklin

Rick Wicklin — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 18:42:28 +0000

Congratulations! You were one of the inspirations for me to begin blogging. Although my blog has a different focus than yours, I aspire to one day have a cadre of readers that generate the kinds of discussions that I enjoy here. Your dedication to the blog is inspirational.

By: Muigai

Muigai — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 18:27:51 +0000

Congratulations on five years of quality blogging. May you have 50 more.

By: Manoel

Manoel — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 18:20:31 +0000

I like the blog too. At first it was a blog about programming to me. Than I realized it was much more than that. I may misremeber, but I guess I found it due to a suggestion by google reader…

By: Vladimir

Vladimir — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 17:47:01 +0000

John, just want to say ‘thank you’. Really like your blog. I’ve just started learning programming. And your posts are thought-provoking read Best wishes from Russia

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 17:00:17 +0000

@Roman I wonder that too. I think it was a Malcolm Gladwell article I read where he was talking about the “over night success” authors of books that have been writing for years. His argument ended up being that there are a few highly connected people. Get them to love you and you’ll get thousands of readers as a result.

So … I’d suspect that might be true here too. Someone else well connected said something nice and people checked it out and never left, or perhaps something like a conference talk lead people to look John up and landed and stuck. Would be nice to know the secret sauce so you could copy it but I suspect it often comes down to the whims of a few very influential people promoting you up into their sphere (you got to have talent too of course, but far more people have talent than end up famous).

By: John

John — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 16:42:51 +0000

Roman: I really don’t know. The blog and the twitter feeds grow together, so the blog might have taken off when the twitter feeds started to take off. But that doesn’t explain why twitter took off.

By: Roman Shapovalov

Roman Shapovalov — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 16:20:22 +0000

Congratulations, John!
How do you think, why the readership started growing steadily at some point? Is there a critical mass of subscribers to change the growth pattern? Or some external factors?

By: Chris Nahr

Chris Nahr — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 15:11:30 +0000

Congratulations on a well-deserved success! I’d like to point out that the unassuming Twitter link above (http://www.johndcook.com/twitter/) actually lists a whole bunch of excellent Twitter feeds. Most readers of this blog will want to subscribe to at least some of them, too.

By: Simon

Simon — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 14:29:48 +0000

I’m also a regular (if reticent) reader! I’ll second what Rje said about the originality of your content. Great work, keep it up!

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 14:08:02 +0000

Hi John,
I don’t read all your posts, but many and those with great interest. Thanks and keep on writing!

By: Rje

Rje — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 14:00:32 +0000

Am a reader for a few years after a friend pointed me at the blog. Most of my technical blogroll jumps on the same topic each day, whereas you come up with whatever topic interests you. It jumps out.

By: John

John — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 13:37:23 +0000

Thanks!

I really appreciate the comments here. When I started blogging, I was anxious about allowing comments. But the comments have been great. I’ve learned a lot from the feedback. And when I make a mistake, I usually find out about it quickly.

Out of thousands of comments, I may have deleted a dozen because they were abusive or irrelevant. The comments have been really high quality.

(Except for spam. I get a lot of spam comments, but my filter does a good job of deleting those. Unfortunately there are occasional false positives. I used to check the spam filter now and then to see if any legitimate comments were blocked. But now I have enough confidence in the filter, and so much spam, that I don’t check it.)

By: vonjd

vonjd — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 13:31:56 +0000

Congrats, John – you are one of the best! Hope you will be around for another 5 years AT LEAST!