Most tech content is bullshit

Crypto is not bullshit, probably. Don't roll your own crpto, probably.

This seems very common in JS land, I once saw a talk in a conf which seemed very basic, later on I stumbled onto a tweet about how the speaker often submits abstracts to CFPs often not knowing much(or at all) about the subject, which serves as motivation to learn and talk about it, works well after having a track record of speaking at events some conferences you can get invited or not have to prove yourself so much to get accepted to speak.

Then I was looking at other conferences lineups and saw many repeat speakers from that same conf, often with the same talk, turned me off quite a bit from going to any more conferences, lots of the same, basic content, with not much expertise behind it.

I have seen lots of talks by experts about the technology they're experts in, but I have seen lots of the other kind as well.

I think Dunning-Kruger is part of it, but also excitement.

If you are the expert you probably got that way by putting in a lot of time, you are at any rate older than when you started out and you may be in fact be quite older than the average developer, often older people do not have the same enthusiasm and excitement for things (although sure there are many that do) so that cuts down the number of people who have experience who also have enthusiasm for getting up and talking.

Getting up and Talking means doing work for it, if you have kids you may not want to do that work unless your job is one where you have to do it. So if you are an older expert with kids but not employed in an evangelist role you probably are not going to go out and do talks.

The expert in a subject may see so deeply into the subject that it is difficult for them to express the gee-whiz aspects that will attract other people. Those who know more are not necessarily able to express that knowledge in an interesting way.

The expert may have lost interest in the matter as they gain in expertise, or they may think things that others will find amazing and interesting to be so obvious and trivial as to not be worth expressing.

For these reasons it may be that talks on a subject are preponderantly given by those with less than expert mastery of the subject.

It feels like if you changed the nouns we could be talking about movies. We are, some of us at least, on our guard when a movie has a huge advertising spend because we have been burned by movies where, "all the best parts were in the preview".

Do you think it would be possible for us to have any transparency into how hard a web page has been 'advertised' and use that to inform our decision processes? I've no idea what that would even look like.

To paraphrase Gary Larson, "We know it is bullshit, but what kind of bullshit?"[1]

Marketing is fact mixed with coercion.

But this is about plagiarism.

The author of the article, in just under 800 words, is addressing the "copypasta" nature of a specific discipline: programming. I like the author's characterization of lazy or necessary plagiarism as "consumer" mentality. That's an interesting twist.

Was this not the 1970's American Auto Industry attempting to implement Japan's earliest implementation of lean manufacturing? Is the same to be said of any "ripoff" product that cheaply imitates the original: e.g., an off-brand version of an Eames Lounger, or cheaply made webcam off Amazon which is a faulty copy of a Logitech?

His observation is a reflection of complex constraints, and while I completely agree individuals should strive for a deep understanding and mastery of what they spend their lives doing, as it benefits us all directly or indirectly by making us conscious citizens (my opinion), I think this is a largely metaphysical reflection lacking contextual nuance rather than a call to action: we've all been in the shoes of his hypothetical individual committing the sin of programmer consumerism, and for good reason.

However, I do appreciate the clarity his transformation applies to a scenario we are all intimately engaged in.

[1] "We know they are idiots, the question is, 'What kind of idiots?'"