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Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

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Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#62
post #39
post #20

Actually can we stop writing tutorials period. When you search for something I always get a bunch of old tutorials by people who are learning something and writing as they learn. If the official docs aren't great, contribute to them.

Are you genuinely arguing that the world would be a better place if there were only official docs and no tutorials? You must have a very different experience to me. I'd say the value is about 70-30% in favour of unofficial tutorials for the tech topics I've learned over the years.

But it is getting increasingly more time consuming to sift through the either outdated and misleading guides or the incomplete, inaccurate, or simply bad ones to get to a useful one.

Even StackOverflow is reaching the point of net-negative value; far too many of its questions and answers are outdated, but the nature of their system means the older (first acceptable) answers tend to be promoted as current answers.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#64
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you prefer ads or paying writers through Medium?

I prefer ads, but I'm one of those weirdos that doesn't see a problem with ads, and actually prefers targeted ads.

Same here. Would love to see a targeted ad that makes me buy something new.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#65

More than just considering the reader's interests, it's also against the author's interests to use Medium. They've become more and more draconian, bloated, and, well, the same as any other venture capitalist ultra-growth-oriented company. The chickens will come home to roost, and if your content and your audience is on Medium, moving them elsewhere is going to become increasingly difficult over time. Ability to expor…

Hardly anyone will find it. Writing for 10 people is not very interesting at all.

I want a Medium that charges me to write, but anyone can read for free. I pay DO $5 a month to host something, why should I not be willing to gain a benefit of a medium with large SEO and strength in numbers, and pay that $5 a month, but still allow people to read for nothing? But no one wants to pay to read or write so you go alone and google ignores you.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#66
Although I use incognito mode as a workaround (if you open the article on incognito it shows it without the paywall, at least it does for me), I find Medium tutorials badly written or written by people with limited technical knowledge.

I'd say 95% of my process with medium goes like this:

1) Finds a blog with a tutorial or something relevant. 2) Opens it and sees a paywall 3) Opens it in incognito mode 4) Browses through the article 5) Leaves the page and learned nothing

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#67
post #39
post #20

Actually can we stop writing tutorials period. When you search for something I always get a bunch of old tutorials by people who are learning something and writing as they learn. If the official docs aren't great, contribute to them.

Are you genuinely arguing that the world would be a better place if there were only official docs and no tutorials? You must have a very different experience to me. I'd say the value is about 70-30% in favour of unofficial tutorials for the tech topics I've learned over the years.

It sounds like the OP was complaining about the bulk of tutorials out there are written by people without any real experience with a subject. It's a blind-leading-the-blind situation where you don't know enough to realize that these people have significant knowledge gaps.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#68

Medium, Twitter and other "dark pattern" companies are on my blacklist: I don't open any link that point to them. Life is slightly better this way.

The only problem with medium is that sometimes you don't know you are redirected to medium because of a custom domain...

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#69
post #20

Actually can we stop writing tutorials period. When you search for something I always get a bunch of old tutorials by people who are learning something and writing as they learn. If the official docs aren't great, contribute to them.

Official docs are great, but there is also a place for tutorials. They generally cover different styles of learning.

For example the official docs should probably contain a bunch of "hello world" tutorials for using the features they offer. But often times once you are combining a couple of different tools it isn't clear if it should go into the official documentation for any one of them. ..and I especially don't want the maintainers of the official documentation acting as gatekeepers for what combinations of tools are "useful" enough to be allowed into the one source of information.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#70
post #20

Actually can we stop writing tutorials period. When you search for something I always get a bunch of old tutorials by people who are learning something and writing as they learn. If the official docs aren't great, contribute to them.

If anyone reading this does write a tutorial, _please_ put the date on it. Or at least the year.

I can't count how many times I've gone to a blog and it's only given the month and day of a post, like "Oct 30". Is that 2020? 2010? I look around the entire page, but I can't find a clue.
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