From someone who worked as a dev/engineer for a long time dont downplay DevOps as “not really development” most of what standard development is today is wiring together different services and building a UI on it. DevOps is a critical part of the impillar that is software development. Just because you’re not writing the JS that renders the front end doesn’t mean you’re not developing for the product! Infrastructure is as important as UI!
I’m kind of in the same boat as you. My mainstay for the longest time was RockPaperShotgun, probably from 2008–2016 or thereabouts. Once the old guard left the quality of the site drastically changed, and it became significant shallower in terms of reviews. Not really sure where to get the same kind of journalism these days.