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A curated and opinionated list of resources for Chief Technology Officers

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Re: A curated and opinionated list of resources for Chief Technology Officers

#21

Post by ryangittins »

thenoblesunfish wrote: post #6

Why is "opinionated" considered so valuable these days? In this case, it's redundant (curated implies opinionated, I think), so it's there to say something loudly. What? Are people not being opinionated enough? Is this defensiveness (if someone doesn't like what you did, well, you've already said it's just your opinion, man)?

I suspect it's part of an effort to push back against the overwhelming number of thoughtless "listicles" which seem to dominate the internet. I'm planning a trip abroad right now and half the effort is in finding a list of places to visit which was put together by someone who actually went there and has some thoughts rather than someone who slapped together some nonsense. Or someone who has taken the time to really whittle a list down to 7 items rather than making another useless "1200 Things to Do in Italy Mega Post!!!"

I think you're right in that "opinionated" seems like a shorthand for "thoughtful curation" which is the opposite of what search engines tend to turn up.

Re: A curated and opinionated list of resources for Chief Technology Officers

#22

Post by sockaddr »

bluepizza wrote: post #10
thenoblesunfish wrote: post #6

Why is "opinionated" considered so valuable these days? In this case, it's redundant (curated implies opinionated, I think), so it's there to say something loudly. What? Are people not being opinionated enough? Is this defensiveness (if someone doesn't like what you did, well, you've already said it's just your opinion, man)?

It's yet another funny trend that goes around in tech circles. As someone originally from math, my personal pet peeve is the way that tech people use "orthogonal" these days. I guess people just want to communicate the idea that this piece of opinionated text is biased. Of course, everything is biased, so opinionated is supposed to be redundant. So it's a signal that the author understands that they have biases, and…

You just need micro-dose so you can grok it from first principles. Here, just read my Medium blog titled “Why I choose X for Y.”

Re: A curated and opinionated list of resources for Chief Technology Officers

#23

Post by rzzzt »

patrickthebold wrote: post #16
rzzzt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a quote in https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ if anyone's wondering. What does the author win by lying about it?

It could just be a mistake, or no longer true, it doesn't have to be a lie.

You are right, I was concentrating more on the second half of the quote which is about someone's personal experience. If what they describe is what they've encountered, it should not have an expiry date.

For the extrapolating "surprisingly large fraction" part, I have no idea. Maybe someone is keeping count on these numbers; it would be interesting to see them.

Re: A curated and opinionated list of resources for Chief Technology Officers

#24

Post by rzzzt »

sockaddr wrote: post #22
bluepizza wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's yet another funny trend that goes around in tech circles. As someone originally from math, my personal pet peeve is the way that tech people use "orthogonal" these days. I guess people just want to communicate the idea that this piece of opinionated text is biased. Of course, everything is biased, so opinionated is supposed to be redundant. So it's a signal that the author understands that they have biases, and…

You just need micro-dose so you can grok it from first principles. Here, just read my Medium blog titled “Why I choose X for Y.”

X for Y considered harmful. I have an article listing 10 alternatives for X, number 8 may surprise you!

Re: A curated and opinionated list of resources for Chief Technology Officers

#25

Post by antonvs »

bluepizza wrote: post #10
thenoblesunfish wrote: post #6

Why is "opinionated" considered so valuable these days? In this case, it's redundant (curated implies opinionated, I think), so it's there to say something loudly. What? Are people not being opinionated enough? Is this defensiveness (if someone doesn't like what you did, well, you've already said it's just your opinion, man)?

It's yet another funny trend that goes around in tech circles. As someone originally from math, my personal pet peeve is the way that tech people use "orthogonal" these days. I guess people just want to communicate the idea that this piece of opinionated text is biased. Of course, everything is biased, so opinionated is supposed to be redundant. So it's a signal that the author understands that they have biases, and…

> the way that tech people use "orthogonal" these days.

If you mean the sense which means “independent”, that goes beyond tech. It was used that way by a law professor in front of the Supreme Court in 2010: https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/supreme_court_word_o...

In software, its use in that way dates back at least 30 years. E.g. from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/016560... (1992):

> It is shown that most of the above concepts are orthogonal, i.e., they can be implemented independently.

At that time, its use was already reasonably well established, although apparently not well enough to omit the i.e.

Re: A curated and opinionated list of resources for Chief Technology Officers

#26

Post by LudwigNagasena »

bluepizza wrote: post #10
thenoblesunfish wrote: post #6

Why is "opinionated" considered so valuable these days? In this case, it's redundant (curated implies opinionated, I think), so it's there to say something loudly. What? Are people not being opinionated enough? Is this defensiveness (if someone doesn't like what you did, well, you've already said it's just your opinion, man)?

It's yet another funny trend that goes around in tech circles. As someone originally from math, my personal pet peeve is the way that tech people use "orthogonal" these days. I guess people just want to communicate the idea that this piece of opinionated text is biased. Of course, everything is biased, so opinionated is supposed to be redundant. So it's a signal that the author understands that they have biases, and…

If you come from math, you should know that “orthogonal” means “independent” in statistics and linear algebra.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_independence

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1536234/correlation...

Re: A curated and opinionated list of resources for Chief Technology Officers

#27

Post by [deleted] »

throwboi123 wrote: post #11

> A surprisingly large fraction of applicants, even those with masters' degrees and PhDs in computer science, fail during interviews when asked to carry out basic programming tasks. For example, I've personally interviewed graduates who can't answer "Write a loop that counts from 1 to 10" or "What's the number after F in hexadecimal? I wonder if this is true?

[deleted]

Re: A curated and opinionated list of resources for Chief Technology Officers

#28

Post by rgrieselhuber »

thenoblesunfish wrote: post #6

Why is "opinionated" considered so valuable these days? In this case, it's redundant (curated implies opinionated, I think), so it's there to say something loudly. What? Are people not being opinionated enough? Is this defensiveness (if someone doesn't like what you did, well, you've already said it's just your opinion, man)?

I like opinionated people and sources in general because, even if I ultimately don’t agree, it helps to clarify the dialectics present in the landscape of options.

Re: A curated and opinionated list of resources for Chief Technology Officers

#29

Post by bluepizza »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #26
bluepizza wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's yet another funny trend that goes around in tech circles. As someone originally from math, my personal pet peeve is the way that tech people use "orthogonal" these days. I guess people just want to communicate the idea that this piece of opinionated text is biased. Of course, everything is biased, so opinionated is supposed to be redundant. So it's a signal that the author understands that they have biases, and…

If you come from math, you should know that “orthogonal” means “independent” in statistics and linear algebra. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_independence https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1536234/correlation...

It means perpendicular in geometry. But perpendicularity implies connection, and therefore, dependency.

Your links barely prove anything? I already knew that statistics is a fictional field.

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