The word "most" is mostly used between 60% and 90%, or more precisely greater than 50% and less than 100%
Most tech content is bullshit
11–20 of 470 posts
Re: Most tech content is bullshit
#12Sturgeon's law.
Re: Most tech content is bullshit
#13From personal experience, including reading a lot of HN, I think programmers as a species are especially biased towards putting forth opinions in the hopes of being validated for our experience or intelligence, even when we know we don't know much about the subject. The fact that IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer) [but...] is a common enough statement in these circles to deserve its own acronym is telling. We often throw out unchecked opinions in hopes they may be right, because that would feel really good, and just let others tell us if they're wrong. When those opinions take the form of a blog post, rebuttal often doesn't exist in the same place as the content, making it seem more authoritative than it often deserves to be.
Re: Most tech content is bullshit
#14"Those who can't do, teach". While I think this is usually a pretty offensive statement, I think it is an apt one in the world of tech blogs. The people who really know what they are doing are not writing blogs. That's why the content that the Netflix team releases really sticks out. If only they broke their 1h-long presentations into 500 word tech blogs.
Those who are doing, also teach, but are constrained in their audience and time with which they can disseminate their know-how by employment contracts.
This is a feature; not a bug given the way our quasi-free-market founded on protection of trade secrets over actual marketwide innovation that lifts everyone else.
I try guiding anyone who'll listen how to do things I'm well versed in; but there is only so much one can do in a day.
Re: Most tech content is bullshit
#15I believe part of problem is Google SEO. Tech content maybe bullshit, but marketing content is even more bullshit. I remember times when we had slow internet and/or only subset of blogs we read from time to time. Most of development was done by reading books, specification of devices for writing drivers and so on. Now, literally everyone is trying to do SEO and use lots of words in articles, kind of creating content,…
“Content marketing”
Re: Most tech content is bullshit
#16I disliked a lot of this article, as "there is bullshit everywhere" seems like something that should just be an axiom at this point.
However, I will expand on a specific pattern of bullshit that is common in the tech world: over-complication for the sake of some sort of "theoretical purity". I think Redux is a good example of this. I think Redux can be used well, but it became the "recommended way to do global state in React" and IMO way many more code bases have become an incomprehensible nightmare because of Redux than have been helped by it.
Similarly, and I'm probably dating myself, but anyone remember the original Enterprise Java Bean specs, and the laughably bad "Pet Store" demo app from the early 00s? It was as if you took a collection of "architects" with no real world experience, and certainly no regard for performance, and had them create the most elaborate Rube Goldberg machine possible.
Re: Most tech content is bullshit
#17Sturgeon's Law: Ninety percent of everything is crap. Tech content is no exception. As the article points out, the corollary is that you have to think for yourself, assessing every piece of content you come across.
Ha, I just posted something similar almost at the same time, but you said it better.
Re: Most tech content is bullshit
#18I believe part of problem is Google SEO. Tech content maybe bullshit, but marketing content is even more bullshit. I remember times when we had slow internet and/or only subset of blogs we read from time to time. Most of development was done by reading books, specification of devices for writing drivers and so on. Now, literally everyone is trying to do SEO and use lots of words in articles, kind of creating content,…
“Content marketing”
"bullshit marketing"
Re: Most tech content is bullshit
#19I believe part of problem is Google SEO. Tech content maybe bullshit, but marketing content is even more bullshit. I remember times when we had slow internet and/or only subset of blogs we read from time to time. Most of development was done by reading books, specification of devices for writing drivers and so on. Now, literally everyone is trying to do SEO and use lots of words in articles, kind of creating content,…
Everything goes to shit when marketing is involved. Or more like, everything goes to shit when money is involved.
Re: Most tech content is bullshit
#20Yes.
On one side there are blogs that just post content to keep momentum, say csstricks.com, and don’t care to fix their errors even after you report them.
On the other side there are absolute noobs that post unresearched content just because some VIP tweeted that you don’t need to be an expert to blog.
Well, that’s what you get: Bullshit everywhere.
Then of course you get awful StackOverflow “top” solutions that are straight up “worst practice”