Just started on Hashnode myself for the same reason.
From my anecdotal experience I am seeing a lot more content hosted on substack, and never really come across hashnode. But when I decided I wanted to write some code-related articles, I NEEDED code syntax highlighting, and that’s how I found hashnode.
I find a lot of Tech/Code/Data Science articles find themselves on Medium too, but I get infuriated by the paywall on every single article. Let’s hope hashnode has some legs…
Good luck with your blogging! 🙏🏻
