Most tech content is bullshit • Hacker News Board

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#171

Post by bryanrasmussen » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 6:20 PM UTC

fxtentacle wrote: post #90

tracerbulletx wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, it might be true that a lot of inexperienced people are writing blogs now as a way to build a personal brand. But your reaction is an over-reaction. There are also lots of incredible experts writing, and writing its self is an incredibly rewarding and educational activity. It's not a waste of time, no matter how busy you are.

Of course, there are also articles written by experts. But those experts will be busy and, thus, publish on a slow schedule. So I believe my heuristic is accurate that anyone posting content too quickly will most likely not do much actual work. Also, if the internet is 95% articles by job seekers, then I'm better off distrusting everyone instead of expanding the trust that only 5% deserve to the other 95%.

>Also, if the internet is 95% articles by job seekers, then I'm better off distrusting everyone instead of expanding the trust that only 5% deserve to the other 95%.

I guess if better off means not finding anything good but no crap either, instead of only finding some good and lots of crap.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#172

Post by paulcole » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 6:20 PM UTC

tuyguntn wrote: post #4

I 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,…

You do realize it was tech bros and not marketers who invented Google SEO right?

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#173

Post by randompwd » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

> At the beginning of my career, I would never, ever, post anything technical on the internet. I thought that if someone was brave enough to post a blog post or take part in a tech discussion, they always know what they are doing. I couldn't be more wrong!

So true.

I think this is just personality trait of people who are over-confident. I started out profesionally at roughly the same time as another dev in a non tech company. Pretty much the only devs in the company.

Technically, I was more skilled and had more engineering mindset. Both of us were savvy on biz side.

However, I was more reserved and less cowboy solutions than him. He was a nice guy and a friend but the difference in personalities were stark when it came to technical things. (This was a mature, real business who previously had outsourced the only dev system they used(ERP)).

He jumped so quickly from doing technical to just talking technical and his career climbed. All the while, I'm wondering how the heck can he take that position when he doesn't know shit about the tech. Turns out if you drift towards management, nobody gives a shit if what you're talking about is a good idea or feasible - the people above you in non-tech companies generally know less than shit.

Now an engineering manager at Bezos company.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#174

Post by jjice » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 6:23 PM UTC

tonystubblebine wrote: post #127

Good is hard. When I left O'Reilly Media in 2005 we were just ending a period where many programmers worked with a set of physical O'Reilly books on their shelf. And everyone at O'Reilly could see that their business was being eaten away by free. Stack Overflow didn't exist yet but we could feel it coming. At the time, we hoped that UGC would have some sort of wisdom of the crowd thing that would lead to high quality…

Seems kind of like the video game crash of 1983[0]. A flood of low quality content that begins to drown out the high quality content. One of the best things about the internet is that anyone can create and publish what they want. One of the worst parts about the internet is that anyone can create and publish what they want.

I'm a big fan of books because that is where a lot of experts seem to prefer to publish their knowledge, and it's usually worth the price. Of course that's not always the case, but I feel like I get much higher quality content from books than Medium articles.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#175

Post by reidjs » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 6:23 PM UTC

dgb23 wrote: post #94

_bxg1 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but nobody's going to say any of those in a blog post. If you're going to the trouble to write a blog post you're probably making a statement . Even if it's ill-informed. There's another dimension to this too, which is that writing blog posts and coming off as knowledgeable can directly translate into career opportunities. As long as you aren't too wrong, there's a material incentive to putting stuff out there…

But wouldn’t you trust someone who writes more critically and honest more then? There is certainly value in that, also from a self-promotional perspective.

I think there’s a huge population of people who prefer reading things that sound good rather than things that are true. So, if you have the ability to make a product sound good you might be able to provide more value to a company than a person who can write about the technical merits of the product. Engineers can see through the marketing BS but they’re not always the target customer.

Also have you seen a job posting for an entry level software engineering position? You have to say you’re knowledgeable about everything on the application or you will get filtered out in the first round. Publishing blog posts is the easiest way to come across as knowledgeable about a new tech.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#176

Post by jedberg » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

leetrout wrote: post #34

I’ve said this for a long time: The people actually doing the work don’t have time to talk about it and the people spending all their time talking about it aren’t doing the work. Of course there are exceptions but I’m extremely skeptical of a lot of stuff I read. Also that the HN bubble will always make readers feel behind when in reality 90% of the industry hasn’t even begun to catch-up. I felt behind with K8S in 20…

> The people actually doing the work don’t have time to talk about it and the people spending all their time talking about it aren’t doing the work.

I think that's a really sad and cynical view. I assume you don't spend 16 hours a day writing code. I assume you have hobbies and other interests. For some people, educating others about their favorite topics is their hobby. Writing about their projects is their hobby.

Here are entire blogs by people who are "doing":

http://www.brendangregg.com

https://perspectives.mvdirona.com

https://netflixtechblog.com

https://www.allthingsdistributed.com

https://airbnb.io

https://engineering.fb.com

Those are just a few I can think of in one minute. If I went through my RSS feeds and bookmarks I could find more.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#177

Post by blub » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

dgb23 wrote: post #76

leetrout wrote: post #34

I’ve said this for a long time: The people actually doing the work don’t have time to talk about it and the people spending all their time talking about it aren’t doing the work. Of course there are exceptions but I’m extremely skeptical of a lot of stuff I read. Also that the HN bubble will always make readers feel behind when in reality 90% of the industry hasn’t even begun to catch-up. I felt behind with K8S in 20…

This might be true for some, but certainly not all. There are plenty talented, productive people also writing articles and giving talks. Hell, most of what I watch/read (not just skim) is content either from the main drivers of a given tech or people who are experts. It isn’t that hard to differentiate.

I suspect those on the other hand might not have much of a life outside tech.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#178

Post by sabas123 » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

bsaul wrote: post #104

bonestormii_ wrote: post #89

Unlike hackernews comments, which of course are totally non-bullshit. The people commenting here all agree that we are not bullshit. As true as some of the comments might be, take a scroll through this very thread of comments and admire the finely curated homogeneity and repetition of popular trivia and opinion. You want to see through the bullshit? Look at the source code for some repository that makes it to the top…

hacker news comment is probably the most reliable source of info i have regarding tech thoses days. Not because the majority of comments are useful or right, but because in between all this regular interner noise you sometimes have the unique opportunity to speak with the creators of the tech itself, or by researchers working on the issue. Now to be honest, most of the time when an issue is complex the most useful co…

I would like to second this. For the past 4-5 years I have lurking this site and /r/programming in parallel. And while both communities definitely have their common accepted opinions, the good technical discussions seem to always be here instead of /r/programming

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#179

Post by MattGaiser » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 6:26 PM UTC

zepto wrote: post #128

tuyguntn wrote: post #4

I 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,…

It’s fair to say that a Google has completely failed at its mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible.

No, they organize the world's information. It is just that the information changed to be more easily organized by Google.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#180

Post by cjonas » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 6:27 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #58

tuyguntn wrote: post #4

I 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,…

Personal brand building is another major contributor to search engine content dilution. Whenever I Google for something in hot new languages or frameworks, I have to sift through 10s of Medium articles from beginner developers who are trying to establish themselves as industry experts. I don't want to read some junior developer's Medium post full of animated GIFs and a pseudo-tutorial that is really just entire sourc…

This drives me crazy! I hate searching for documentation and the top results are blogs containing outdated copy and paste of the official docs with some witty text and gifs.