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Most tech content is bullshit (2020)

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Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)

#31

Post by strangattractor »

Lacerda69 wrote: post #28
strangattractor wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interpreted "bullshit" to mean fluff. Much of the content I encounter appears to be regurgitated trivial examples from tutorials. Entire websites are dedicated to this. The goal generally appears to generate some type of influencer status or get money from ads. Few people offer helpful content that provides a deeper understanding or solves a tricky problem. Probably because they can't.

"helpful content that provides a deeper understanding or solves a tricky problem" is a lot if work to create, even if you know the solution or can solve the problem easily. I can empathize with people who dont spend their limited free time on explaining others how to solve problems out of the goodwill of their heart and I am eternally grateful for the tiny minority that does this.

I am also grateful to the people that do actually share exceptional content. The problem is that search engines don't know the difference and the trivial seems to drown out the useful more and more over time.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)

#32

Post by Little_Kitty »

strangattractor wrote: post #23
jlengrand wrote: post #21

" On est toujours le con de quelqu'un, et tant pis pour lui". -> "We are always someone's jerk, and so much the worse for him". Agree with the article, I just wished it wasn't conflating "bullshit / actual harmful content" as much with "stuff that is valid, but in a given context". 200% that nothing online, (nor IRL to be fair), should be taken as universal truth. I see that same at conferences, with certain topics/f…

I interpreted "bullshit" to mean fluff. Much of the content I encounter appears to be regurgitated trivial examples from tutorials. Entire websites are dedicated to this. The goal generally appears to generate some type of influencer status or get money from ads. Few people offer helpful content that provides a deeper understanding or solves a tricky problem. Probably because they can't.

You get a lot more views for a video on how to index a column in MySQL than for how to approach evaluating your needs and choose a suitable database. The latter would be outdated in a few years as new technologies emerge, while the former can be padded with enough fluff to show two adverts. So we end up with the content you know today, rather than what you'd really like to see. It's good to remember this and interact with those who do publish the latter content, plus it makes the algorithm feed you more content that's worth your time.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)

#33

Post by wccrawford »

OmarShehata wrote: post #26
mola wrote: post #22

In some respect being a software engineer today is really hard. OTOH you want to do the right thing, so you don't want to invent a solution yourself. So you look for available resources, you go online. There you're going to encounter either: 1. Spam from junior devs who started a blog so to build a name for themselves. 2. Spam from SEO mills peddling junior level wisdome so they can get ad money. 3. Spam from softwar…

> Spam from junior devs who started a blog so to build a name for themselves. I often find this is the most useful category out of the 5 you listed. Junior devs writing something like "How to setup webpack" often explain things in plain words and just spell out how to get the thing working. There's humility to the post like "I don't know what all these options do, but this is what worked for me". I find that a lot mo…

While I do think that most of the useful pages either come from juniors or from someone promoting their own product, I think there are a ton of bad pages from juniors that have outright incorrect or dangerous information, too. So it can be hard to tell what advice to use and what not to if you're at a level that you're asking the question in the first place.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)

#34

Post by jfengel »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #29

Not every decision has to be done with maximum research. That’s usually a waste of time. It’s more efficient to try a couple things until something works and move on (“satisficing”). A key skill you learn over time is why decisions actually matter. But it’s not inherently bad that there’s no good reason for something, it really depends on the context. And sometimes things that had good reasons turn out bad anyway bec…

A good life lesson in general. My version of it: "most of the most important decisions you make in life will be made in the basis of insufficient information."

As programmers we may be used to the notion that we can optimize if we know enough. We often can't. Decisions won't get better with more information because it's still insufficient. All you can do is use your best judgment -- of when to use your best judgment. And live with the consequences.

That doesn't help you make the decision. But it can help you avoid spending too much time kicking yourself over it.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)

#35

Post by raincom »

spacemadness wrote: post #18

One devious form of bullshit is always using the simplest of examples to prove out an architecture pattern and call it a day. I’ve lost count on how many times I’ve seen patterns with glaring open questions and pitfalls the author avoids. Then the cacophony of likes follow from folks who’re likely very early in their career or hobby and don’t know any better. This is very prevalent on iOS development blogs as authors…

You zeroed in on the core element of bullshitting: trivializing complexity into sound bites, simplest examples.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)

#36

Post by OmarShehata »

Dudester230602 wrote: post #27
OmarShehata wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spam from junior devs who started a blog so to build a name for themselves. I often find this is the most useful category out of the 5 you listed. Junior devs writing something like "How to setup webpack" often explain things in plain words and just spell out how to get the thing working. There's humility to the post like "I don't know what all these options do, but this is what worked for me". I find that a lot mo…

> How to setup webpack Half the juniors are creating a problem ("modern" frameworks), the other half is trying to solve it.

I am completely baffled by this comment. You're saying the _juniors_ are creating overly complicated modern frameworks, or are the ones pushing it?? It's clearly the opposite in my opinion. Big companies/teams are releasing tools that may work well for their scale but are overkill for most, and they're championing them as good solutions for everybody, and juniors are the force working in the opposite direction (trying to simplify/untangle all this complexity, they don't have the experience to recognize if it's overkill. They also want to get hired at all the companies that use these tools so they have to learn it).

Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)

#37

Post by PragmaticPulp »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #29

Not every decision has to be done with maximum research. That’s usually a waste of time. It’s more efficient to try a couple things until something works and move on (“satisficing”). A key skill you learn over time is why decisions actually matter. But it’s not inherently bad that there’s no good reason for something, it really depends on the context. And sometimes things that had good reasons turn out bad anyway bec…

> Not every decision has to be done with maximum research.

I’ve been at a couple companies that wouldn’t take any proposal seriously unless you showed up with a list of citations to blog posts, books, or even podcasts.

The root cause was a management structure that wanted to do everything with a maximum of evidence.

It opened the door to a lot of terrible decisions winning for no reason other than someone found a blog post that Google does it this way, or Uber wrote a blog post about this, or Martin Fowler wrote a post about that.

The most egregious abuse was when a team that had to deal with maybe 100 logins per day spent over 6 months researching how to build their auth system to match Big Tech. They could have picked any off the shelf solution and been done in a week, but instead it became an endless boondoggle of research, presentations, proposals, and committees. Several people were even planning conference talks around it, so it started to evolve into whatever would sound best for their talks.

That was my cue that I was at the wrong type of company.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)

#38

Post by jvans »

spacemadness wrote: post #18

One devious form of bullshit is always using the simplest of examples to prove out an architecture pattern and call it a day. I’ve lost count on how many times I’ve seen patterns with glaring open questions and pitfalls the author avoids. Then the cacophony of likes follow from folks who’re likely very early in their career or hobby and don’t know any better. This is very prevalent on iOS development blogs as authors…

The devil is always in the details and it's too easy to present a high level intelligent sounding argument that ignores all the important complexity.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)

#39

Post by alephnerd »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #9

I’ve noticed this pattern happening on tech blogging pattern, dev-dot-to being not the least: “I’ve been through a web dev bootcamp 6 months ago and I’m three months on my first tech job ever, and here is my enormous trove of wisdom I’m about to bestow upon you.” What follows is, at best, very superficial, and at worst, just plain wrong and bad stuff. This is recent. Back when I’ve been more active in hackintosh comm…

> mediocre journalists (or sometimes even vloggers with no training) who start thinking about themselves as experts on something all of a sudden and start touring radios, podcasts, and TV shows, giving opinions left and right, these are probably the worst.

Us vendors pay for those and have some random journalism grad or ChatGPT ghostwrite it.

B2B SaaS and Enterprise Sales absolutely depends on SEO from a brand and pipeline creation perspective due to legacy marketing leadership and perverse incentives.

This is starting to change (a la Product Lead Growth, Persona Segmentation, Direct Sales, etc), but to paraphrase Max Planck, GTM Strategy only advances with every retirement.

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