[raffomania]

You make it sound like a big audience is the only thing that matters. The linked post talks about a personal website as a digital identity. Giving people a link so they can find you online is a good reason to have a website, even today.

Besides that, making your own website is rewarding in many other ways - Being creative, getting thoughts out of your head, pinning down certain arguments you tend to repeat, etc.

[loup-vaillant]

> Giving people a link so they can find you online…

…does not always work. When I give people a link they can't click on, they type it in the search bar. And not even in full, they tend to strip the http://www and .com ends. And you can't click on a piece of paper, which is where my CV typically ends up on.

Last week, I interviewed with someone who said he googled me. All he found was a "little GitHub page". My full name ranks my personal web site first or second on every search engine I've tried, yet he couldn't find it. Is the Google bubble that strong?

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Loup+Vaillant

https://www.google.com/search?q=Loup%20Vaillant

https://www.bing.com/search?q=Loup+Vaillant

[mturmon]

Your personal website, btw, is really great, and that interviewer missed out. I program mostly Python in scientific contexts, but it's great to have your perspective on some larger questions of programming style and technology.

[loup-vaillant]

Thanks. :-)

[CM30]

When I searched for your name, it came up second in Google, first in DuckDuckGo and first in Bing. Not sure how the interviewer managed to miss it, both the site and your GitHub profile are in the top two results for your name.

[marcolussetti]

Your personal website come second for me. I wonder whether the person just looked at the first result.

[teddyh]

> When I give people a link they can't click on […]

Try giving them a QR code instead.

[asdff]

"Weird, I couldn't add you on snapchat with your code"

[stakhanov]

The first aspect you mention (handing out a link so people can look it up) is like an online business card that's "free form" in nature. That makes sense if you are a creative professional and the website is a showcase of your creative ability.

But otherwise: If you apply for an job, say in finance, you'll be asked for a resume, because people can't be bothered dealing with information that's extraneous to what goes into a resume.

If you apply for a job as a coder, you'll be asked for a link to a github repo, because people can't be bothered with looking at anything other than your code.

If you apply for a research role, you'll be asked for a link to where your publications can be found, maybe on researchgate, because people can't be bothered with looking at anything other than your peer-reviewed publications.

Do you see the pattern here? It's another example of the balance between information and attention shifting towards too-much-information/too-little-attention. -- And personal webpages aren't good at dealing with the too-little-attention part of the equation, so there is rarely a demand for giving people information about yourself in the "free form" style.

The second aspect you mention: If you produce some webpage content, you can always decide whether you want to see it as a diary and not put it up online, or whether you want to see it as something that should be out in the public, and do put it up online. It seems to me like a contradiction to prefer putting it online, but then not to care about whether it actually gets seen or not. (Especially considering that one gets into a lot of liability everytime one puts something up online).

[H1Supreme]

> If you apply for a job as a coder, you'll be asked for a link to a github repo, because people can't be bothered with looking at anything other than your code.

In my experience, this is not true. I setup a website to describe software projects, and my role in them. It was, per my current boss, a key factor in getting an interview. Browsing github repo's, imo, is much more bothersome than reading a well crafted project page.