Twenty Years of Blogging
Eli Bendersky’s blog has now been online for 20 years. Starting in May 2003, the site has been a constant through major life changes, and reaching this milestone prompted a look back at how much has changed technically and editorially.
Using the Wayback Machine, the earliest retrievable post is from just a week after the blog’s launch—a book review originally hosted on http://use.perl.org/~spur/journal/, a domain that no longer exists.
At the ten-year mark, the site used an outdated layout that mirrored the 2003 version, save for some styling updates.
The blog’s format settled in September 2014 with a migration to Pelican, after which the site’s appearance has remained largely unchanged.
Infrastructure evolves more quietly than design. Comments were disabled in 2018 after outliving their utility. This year, web analytics moved to a
self-hosted, lightweight implementation using GoatCounter, reducing dependence on third-party services. The site’s static HTML output has proven robust; downtime remains rare, and the blog has weathered frequent spikes from Hacker News and similar traffic surges—a major improvement over the earlier WordPress-on-BlueHost setup that struggled under load.
Over the past decade, posting has averaged about 25 articles per year, with roughly 100,000 monthly visits. Subject matter has shifted alongside the author’s interests, from C++ and Python topics toward Go, Rust, and WebAssembly content.
The author extends thanks to readers, whose feedback has been a highlight. Stopping is not the plan—though whether the blog reaches 30 years, he notes, remains to be seen.
