Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Have a personal web site

writing.markchristian.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 436 posts

Re: Have a personal web site

#331

Post by _hardwaregeek »

otikik wrote: post #137
_hardwaregeek wrote: post #61

I don't judge a person's technical skill through this metric (or at least I make an attempt not to), but it's rather noticeable when someone has nothing going on online. A blank GitHub, no website, no projects, etc. For an employed person, eh, whatever, maybe they just have a life. But for a student? I'll admit I get a little suspicious. I'm not saying students should have a huge roster of projects and crazy extracur…

I used to think the same way as you. Until something happened in my life that changed me. I used to have a very fruitful open source life. I have a personal website, a blog, etc. Some of my libraries are useful and reasonably known on my niche. Then I had a child. Everything changed after that. I suddenly don't have time or energy to devote to open source any more. I am the same person as before, but if you looked at…

That's completely fair. I don't want to be unduly harsh on people who don't have the time.

But also, am I crazy to ask that people practice even a tiiiiny bit outside of class? I know some people legitimately don't have the time or capability, but that's not everyone. I can't even find 5 people in my school who have a semi active GitHub. It's completely frustrating, as our curriculum is a joke. I don't know how they expect to get a job when our curriculum teaches nothing, they don't do any programming outside of school and they have no other experience.

Bear in mind I don't go to a low ranked school. We just had a professor who won the goddamn Turing Award (easy to guess I suppose). Somehow though we have the most anemic, half-dead CS community.

Re: Have a personal web site

#332

Post by JohnFen »

darekkay wrote: post #160
caymanjim wrote: post #151

I don't want a personal web site. I've had a handful of them in the past, and I've thrown together a couple shitty blogs over the years, but there are three big reasons why I don't anymore: I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date. Like everyone, I harbor fantasies about how interesting I am, and if I run into you at the pub, I'll talk y…

> I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date. The main goal of my blog was not to be interesting or show off (even though I do include my side projects etc.), but to write about specific issues I managed to solve. As a software developer, I'm googling for problems all the time. 95% of the time I land on StackOverflow or GitHub issues. But…

> But it's about those 5% that I find a blog post which really helps me. My goal was to contribute back the same way.

This is the main reason that I keep a personal website.

Re: Have a personal web site

#333

Post by JohnFen »

leftyted wrote: post #233
darekkay wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date. The main goal of my blog was not to be interesting or show off (even though I do include my side projects etc.), but to write about specific issues I managed to solve. As a software developer, I'm googling for problems all the time. 95% of the time I land on StackOverflow or GitHub issues. But…

> The main goal of my blog was not to be interesting or show off That's what they all say. Humans are social creatures and the main motivator for anyone to do anything in public is to "show off" or "be interesting". "All is vanity". That isn't necessarily a bad thing. Without a desire to compete, impress, prove our worth and so on we'd be living in huts. But it's something to be aware of and something that should be…

> the main motivator for anyone to do anything in public is to "show off" or "be interesting". "All is vanity".

I think that's demonstrably far too broad of a brush. Yes, this is a very common motivator, but it's hardly universal.

Re: Have a personal web site

#334

Post by markchristian »

yoz-y wrote: post #277

A side note: Author mentions but as far as I know (and after searching for it too) this element does not actually exist. Modern browsers fallback to rendering for anything they don't know but it's not exactly semantic web either.

I actually meant to use — just a silly mistake. I've corrected the article since.

Re: Have a personal web site

#335

Post by JohnFen »

ses1984 wrote: post #186
darekkay wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date. The main goal of my blog was not to be interesting or show off (even though I do include my side projects etc.), but to write about specific issues I managed to solve. As a software developer, I'm googling for problems all the time. 95% of the time I land on StackOverflow or GitHub issues. But…

Out of curiosity, why not use a free platform like stack overflow or a github issue to publish your solutions?

Not the OP, but the reason that I don't use those platforms is, essentially, control. I don't trust any of them to exist forever, or to continue to operate in a way that works for me.

Keeping everything on a site that I am in control of eliminates the issues of uncertainty.

(I do answer direct questions on Stack Overflow and such, I just don't keep my accumulated works or investigative notes on third party sites.)

Re: Have a personal web site

#336

Post by nine_k »

caymanjim wrote: post #151

I don't want a personal web site. I've had a handful of them in the past, and I've thrown together a couple shitty blogs over the years, but there are three big reasons why I don't anymore: I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date. Like everyone, I harbor fantasies about how interesting I am, and if I run into you at the pub, I'll talk y…

I keep my own simple static web site in order to host my resume. It is by far the most important page, and, at times, the most visited.

Re: Have a personal web site

#337

Post by ta1234567890 »

caymanjim wrote: post #151

I don't want a personal web site. I've had a handful of them in the past, and I've thrown together a couple shitty blogs over the years, but there are three big reasons why I don't anymore: I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date. Like everyone, I harbor fantasies about how interesting I am, and if I run into you at the pub, I'll talk y…

> I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date.

There was a writer (sorry, forgot who), that used to say: it's not that your life is not interesting, it's that you don't have a good storyteller to tell it.

Good storytellers can spin up a great story out of seemingly very boring facts. It's just the way you tell it.

Most youtubers/streamers/influencers are not really saying anything particularly cool or interesting, but they know how to tell it to their audience.

It's very similar to marketing/product. You need a decent product to sell, but most of the success will come from being able to properly market it, not from how good the product is.

In this case, you and your experiences are the product, the stories about them and how to tell them are the marketing.

You can definitely learn how to tell better stories.

One last analogy, you know when someone tells a joke and it's just not funny at all? Then your hear someone else tell exactly the same joke, but now it's actually really funny? The difference is not the joke, but they way they tell it.

Re: Have a personal web site

#338

Post by JohnFen »

purplezooey wrote: post #328
caymanjim wrote: post #151

I don't want a personal web site. I've had a handful of them in the past, and I've thrown together a couple shitty blogs over the years, but there are three big reasons why I don't anymore: I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date. Like everyone, I harbor fantasies about how interesting I am, and if I run into you at the pub, I'll talk y…

I have an exceedingly common first and last name As you implied, that's kind of like a secret weapon. No bored middle manager can Google you and not hire you because they didn't like the wording of a DIY forum post about your plumbing 9 years ago.

I agree! My real name is exceedingly common as well, and I wouldn't have it any other way. It makes me essentially ungoogle-able.

Re: Have a personal web site

#340

Post by dmuth »

mooreds wrote: post #83

Couldn't agree more. A place on the internet that you own and can write your thoughts down is very valuable. Yes, there are other services that you can leverage (medium, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, stack overflow, to name a few, depending on your content and desired reach) but your content there will alwybe subject to the whims of others. Big companies aren't always going to have your best interest at heart…

This is the comment I came here for. It's always a good idea to have your own spot on the Internet that you have control over, and can write about whatever you like.

My website is my username DOT org, for anyone who is curious.

Post reply on HN