r/programming
Developers reading industry links
- Size
- Very large
- Buying intent
- Low
- Promotion
- Closed
A link aggregator rather than a discussion community, with heavy moderation against anything resembling self-promotion. The audience is global, passive and reading rather than buying.
Occasionally worth it for a genuinely notable technical write-up with no product attached. Never worth it for a product. The distinction is enforced rigorously and the community is quick to identify content marketing.
What people actually post
The technical article
Deep write-ups from engineering blogs. The only format that works here.
The industry news
Language releases, acquisitions, incidents. High engagement, no commercial path.
The opinion piece
Draws enormous comment volume and produces nothing measurable.
What people get wrong about it
The subscriber count attracts people expecting reach. It is a passive reading audience with no commercial path.
Can you promote in r/programming?
Closed. Even excellent technical content is removed if it reads as promotion for the company that published it.
What gets you removed
Anything that could be read as content marketing, including good writing published on a company blog.
A good first contribution
Submit a genuinely novel technical article with no product attached, or do not participate. There is no third option that works.
Products that fit here
- Genuinely novel technical write-ups
- Nothing with a call to action
- Nothing commercial
- Occasional brand awareness at best
What does not work
Product announcements of any kind. This is the most reliably wasted effort in the vertical.
Timing
Irrelevant.
How it compares to the neighbours
The communities closest to r/programming, and how they differ on the three things that decide whether one is worth your time.
| Community | Size | Intent | Promotion |
|---|---|---|---|
| r/programming | Very large | Low | Closed |
| r/ExperiencedDevs | Large | High | Closed |
| r/webdev | Very large | Medium | Conditional |
| r/Python | Very large | Medium | Conditional |
Where this fits in a wider plan
r/programming appears in our list of the best subreddits for developer tools, which sets it against the other communities worth watching in that market. If you are starting from nothing, the six-week plan in finding your first 100 users covers how to build standing before you mention a product at all.
Watch r/programming without reading it.
Lidar reads it every day, scores each post against what your product does, and sends you the ones worth answering. Along with the rest of engineering and infrastructure.