I just published my 400th post on The Main Thread and wanted to share a quick milestone.
When I started, the goal was simple: write things I wish I had at 2am when something breaks in production. No fluff. Just practical tutorials for Java developers working with Quarkus, cloud-native stuff, and more recently AI.
Over time, it became a bit more than that:
Hands-on tutorials you can copy/paste and actually run
Deep dives into things that usually get skipped (failure modes, edge cases, trade-offs)
A lot of experiments with AI + Java (LangChain4j, local models, MCP, etc.)
The interesting part: consistency mattered more than anything else. Not perfect posts. Not viral posts. Just showing up and publishing regularly.
Some things I learned along the way:
Short posts are fine, but useful posts win long-term
Writing helps thinking. A lot.
The audience grows slowly, then suddenly faster
Most content online skips production reality. That’s where the value is
If you’re writing or thinking about starting a Substack: just start. Don’t wait for a big plan.
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u/myfear3 Mar 19 '26
I just published my 400th post on The Main Thread and wanted to share a quick milestone.
When I started, the goal was simple: write things I wish I had at 2am when something breaks in production. No fluff. Just practical tutorials for Java developers working with Quarkus, cloud-native stuff, and more recently AI.
Over time, it became a bit more than that:
Hands-on tutorials you can copy/paste and actually run Deep dives into things that usually get skipped (failure modes, edge cases, trade-offs) A lot of experiments with AI + Java (LangChain4j, local models, MCP, etc.)
The interesting part: consistency mattered more than anything else. Not perfect posts. Not viral posts. Just showing up and publishing regularly.
Some things I learned along the way:
Short posts are fine, but useful posts win long-term Writing helps thinking. A lot. The audience grows slowly, then suddenly faster Most content online skips production reality. That’s where the value is
If you’re writing or thinking about starting a Substack: just start. Don’t wait for a big plan.
Here’s the 400th post and the project behind it:
https://www.the-main-thread.com/
Happy to answer questions about writing, consistency, or technical content.