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Most tech content is bullshit (2020)

aleksandra.codes

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Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)

#71

Post by antod »

vrnvu wrote: post #61

I was in a meeting one day, explaining some tech decisions I had made. At one point, my manager interrupted me, looking pale and completely out of place. He asked, "I don't get this approach. Can you share with me the tech blog where you read about this?" (...) I couldn't help but think: would a random blog post from the internet have more respect and authority than my own decisions and explanations?

Being as generous as possible and without other context, I would interpret that as a request for some background info you trust that they could use to catch up on those concepts in their own time without derailing the meeting by getting you to explain it. Especially if most others present probably already understand it.

Or at least that is how I would've tried to convey it if I was your manager.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)

#72

Post by nathants »

some always rebuild, others never do.

the best of us pause and think hard, about which is advantageous in a particular time and place.

in any given situation, it could easily go either way.

tolerating and resolving ambiguity to the best of one’s abilities is the name of the game.

i wonder, which bias is healthier? toward or away from rebuilding?

Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)

#73

Post by crabmusket »

ilyt wrote: post #46
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…

I feel like classic object oriented tutorials talking about fruits and apples with no connection to actual apps you'd build are ones to add to this pile

Coming up with good examples of inheritance is hard. Instead of teaching with bad examples, that should have been a warning that inheritance should be much less commonly used.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)

#74

Post by quenix »

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 think a more natural translation would be “You are always the idiot to someone else. And too bad for them.”

Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)

#75

Post by geophph »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #19
kazinator wrote: post #13

Most of the time, you should not be inventing your own equivalents of off-the-shelf algorithms. (Let alone something like crypto.) How much you evaluate the borrowed alternatives (or whether you even evaluate alternatives) entirely depends on how much that choice matters in the situation. Situations in which the choice doesn't matter are very common, and in situations in which it doesn't matter. The scientist isn't c…

Counter point: writing things from scratch once in a while sharpens your skills and helps you make better decisions in the future about tradeoffs, and let’s you evaluate different implementations without having to resort to a search on hackernews, stack overflow, or GitHub to find out what the trendiest option is Take exercise for example: it’s all unnecessary work, but it makes you stronger so that you maintain your…

Agreed. I also like calculus as an example. First you gotta write out derivatives by hand, then you learn you can “drop the exponent then subtract one from it.”

Doing it the long way without the shortcuts helps you understand it better inside and out I’d think for when you do use existing code.

I find sometimes it’s fun to write out a program to do something without any (or at least very minimum) imports just to see how I’d solve it (for a reasonably real use case). Helps to better understand the concepts / tricks the “real” implementation might use.

Some fun examples: building an animated UI spinner “by hand” or setting up a sub-pub implementation for passing data around my app.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)

#76

Post by [deleted] »

crabmusket wrote: post #73
ilyt wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like classic object oriented tutorials talking about fruits and apples with no connection to actual apps you'd build are ones to add to this pile

Coming up with good examples of inheritance is hard. Instead of teaching with bad examples, that should have been a warning that inheritance should be much less commonly used.

[deleted]

Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)

#77

Post by manmal »

ilyt wrote: post #46
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…

I feel like classic object oriented tutorials talking about fruits and apples with no connection to actual apps you'd build are ones to add to this pile

Coming up with protocol oriented programming was probably one of the bigger disservices Apple has done its developers. There are still people who think everything needs a protocol, or it isn’t soundly structured.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)

#78

Post by manmal »

thefourthchime wrote: post #55
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #43

True, but most content in general is bullshit. Most scientific publications is BS published for the sake of pumping your numbers. Most student memoire is BS to pass the exam. Most financial analyses, most TV journal reporting, most tweets, most books are BS. Ever read doctors or lawyers specialized magazines? Most pages are BS on top of BS. Paid content, content produced to fill space, making volume, low quality auth…

I think you're going a little bit far, but I tend to agree. My reasoning for this is, to look back on experts from the past. Unless it's a hard scientific fact, a law of physics, most things are really just opinions that people tend to agree with. Remember Leaded gasoline? How about DDT or Asbestos? How about Freud? Of the thing the bible likes to talk about, slavery. Even in the 25 years, I've been in programming, i…

> The only thing I follow is keeping stuff simple.

Some other things I’ve kept around:

- Complex systems must develop out of a simple system (there’s a clever quote I can’t find right now) - also known as “make it work, then make it better”

- Bugs shall become test cases

- Bug reproducibility should be maximized (crash tracking / good logs, sacrifice performance if necessary)

- Fail fast

- Composition over inheritance (arguably a subjective one, but I’ve never regretted doing it)

Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)

#80

Post by jackfoxy »

> Tutorials show harmful patterns.

Try to find a sample SQL database, for any vendor, that does not employ artificial table primary keys. This was a requirement in the 1980s so that your queries would execute before the heat death of the universe, but that has not been the case for decades. Microsoft is particularly guilty of this. Artificial keys are an anti-pattern. (And, btw, there's a dearth of literature on why artificial keys are an anti-pattern.)

Here's the only sample database I know of that consistently uses natural keys across all tables, created by a SQL educator who knows his stuff.

https://github.com/ami-levin/Animal_Shelter

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