I went from being on reddit daily to not opening it for almost 2 or 3 weeks now. I haven't had an issue content wise, sure there is some decent informational on the site but, I find a lot of information on it to be outdated anyway

I agree 100%. I set up a home server after reddit fell, and unfortunately I've been having to use reddit to ask a lot of my questions. The communities for the stuff I need to ask here on Lemmy just don't exist, and on reddit they do, and you'll get responses pretty quickly.

For any kind of programming questions reddit has been far better than lemmy simply because it is significantly more populated.

Nope, checked out July first and never looked back.

OP, make some more recommendations for communities you want to see. Ask instance admins for help grtting those communities to start being active. And crosspost them to "discovery" boards.

I am sorta having this issue - some boards I like don't wanna have deep discussions, and I do. I'm like, so lame, if you tell me to watch a show or read a book to come back and discuss, you're probably doing me a favor.

DDG search still pull it up, so I have to go out of my way to search for stuff here first

Nah, My preference setting is "All, new" and there is some wild shit on here. Lots of international instances I would never get to see because of some "algorithm".

I deleted my 14 year old reddit account when they pulled their shit. Then I recently created a new account because I need to be able to get answers to specific programming questions sometimes, and lemmy doesn't have the population of users that reddit still has. I generally post on both lemmy and reddit, but I almost always get more answers on reddit.

These types of posts feel like they need a density of users to emerge and lemmy might just not have hit that tipping point yet. I have see it in non-reddit niche forums and I think it will just take some time.

lately I read some post after googling for howtos but without logging it, blocking trackers and ads as always; I go there only if it's the only resource I find

No. With a Lemmy account, and some careful bookmarks, I am fully entertained here.

There is one short story author on Reddit I like to follow. Likely to follow them on another site instead.

There are a couple of subreddits that I still visit. My usage has dropped to a tiny fraction of what it used to be. In fact I think Reddit shitting the bed has been good for me overall as I'm spending a lot less time scrolling random shit.

Only problem i have with lemmy is that after scrolling for a bit i end up wading through posts with 0 comments and 2 upvotes, which are inevitably just links to something i do not give a singular toss about.

But that's honestly kinda just good, it forces me to not just stare at my computer nonstop.