Most tech content is bullshit • Hacker News Board

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#181

Post by Carpetsmoker » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #133

Carpetsmoker wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 5 years ago I attended a local code meetup and someone gave a presentation about this new TypeScript thing. He basically just explained the basic syntax, concepts. etc. A bit boring, but not the worst I've seen. Then in the Q&A someone asked a "In our experience, we've had problems with X, what's your take?" (I've forgotten what X was specifically), and the guy replied with "well, actually, we haven't really us…

>The entire talk seemed pretty useless to me. To you. On the flip side, it provided an introductory level overview of a concept many watching/attending may not have looked into themselves, or were thinking of looking into. It also provided a different form of introduction, which could be valuable for attendees with a learning style preference different to that of look-at-a-how-to or check-out-the-docs. >the guy repli…

I attended exactly because of those reasons. The problem is mostly that actually explaining a language (even from a high-level overview) well is a bit more involved than just explaining the syntax and the like.

For example I currently mostly work with Go, and if I would give a high-level presentation about Go I'd start with the "tour of Go" tutorial, but I'd also add some context to some things, explain where you need to be careful to avoid problems, and emphasize the usefulness of other things that may not be obvious at a glance. That kind of stuff. I think the presentation format is a great way for doing that.

A beginning JavaScript programmer might explain the "with" keyword, which would be a mistake. I have no idea if the presentation contained any mistakes like that.

I don't work much with JS, and I haven't looked much as TypeScript since, but I didn't really learn all that much more than what I already knew: "TypeScript is JavaScript with optional typing".

Was it useful for others? Maybe; I hope so. But for me personally I consider it a wasted hour in my life.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#182

Post by ozim » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 6:28 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,…

My solution for this problem: 1) stop trying to learn from random blogs, get a book. Books are still out there and you can learn just as good from them now as 20 years ago.

2) Get a subset of blogs to follow and stick to it. If you want to search in specific sites google has "site:" operator, you can search on specific sites.

3) by following 1 and 2 you can easily stop visiting shitty blogs made only for SEO, when they won't see any traffic they will fold because they will see no one is caring about what they write.

I am in process of implementing that. Got some books from humble bundle in topic that I am interested in, so no browsing crap until I get through those.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#183

Post by azeirah » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #108

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As a programmer with some 20 years of experience who likes to write tutorials on original research and techniques — you can pry my animated gifs out of my cold dead fingers! All my life I waited for broadband to be widespread enough to write articles with rich embedded animations. And yes, sometimes they only serve the purpose of entertainment or emotional tone setting. Other times they’re actual part of the content.…

Go you! I love high quality written content with a lighter tone. I find it incredibly difficult to focus on dry tests because of my ADHD.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#184

Post by oefrha » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 6:28 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…

In my experience this is particularly egregious when trying to compare frameworks and libraries in the JS ecosystem. The posts usually boil down to “I wrote a hello world with X and Y, here are my thoughts”, or worse, “I wrote a hello world with X, didn’t even bother to write it with Y, here are my thoughts on why X is awesome and Y sucks”, or worse still, “I wrote a hello world with X, didn’t even bother to write it with Y, here are my thoughts on why X is awesome and Y sucks, and I’ll pretend I have ten years of experience with each.”

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#185

Post by nippoo » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

Counter-argument: coming up with your own, carefully considered solutions to every technical challenge is absurdly time-consuming. The reason we can build such complicated applications in such a small amount of time is partly because we're relying on other people to make default, sensible tradeoffs - a framework supporting a particular type of SQL database, or NoSQL, or PHP or Django or whatever it might be. The mental effort of analysing all the tradeoffs of doing something one particular way (with such a wide range of possible options) for every little decision rapidly gets overwhelming. Of course it's worth doing a bit of research (which often ends up being "read someone else's blog" for bigger decisions, but unless you're willing to spend 2 months building a prototype application in each of Ruby, Django, PHP, and whatever other fun new JS framework du jour there is, it's perfectly valid to go for the path of least resistance and hope it doesn't cause you too many problems in the long run.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#186

Post by jedberg » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 6:29 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…

> and those people were generally also pedantic luminaries

Having been involved in publishing tech books, that is a beautiful way of describing tech reviewers.

I too miss the paid ecosystem. And not just in tech books. Music too. Paying someone for curation had definite value to me.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#187

Post by alibarber » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 6:29 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,…

Uggh - this!

Maybe I'm so used to it for programming queries, but I've gotten back into electronics and ham radio after a long time, and have always dreamed of owning a decent oscilloscope. Googling 'good digital hobbyist oscilloscope' just now was a frustrating waste of time. It's just pages and pages of regurgitated specs and affiliate links, no useful _actual_ reviews or anything...

Take this top 10 result. It's on Medium which is new and hip and nice so must be of high quality...

https://medium.com/@Amyperlman/best-buying-oscilloscope-for-...

Oh cool, hmm ok - what else does the author write about? "Things to consider before buying a camera for hunting" - "Drug Rehab for Married Couples" - > Reviews for a particular line of vaccum cleaner, Baltimore Security Cameras and Interior Design in India. I mean sure they could genuinely have diverse interests and a chaotic and international personal life - but these articles are just keyword stuffing for another bunch of 'content' that will helpfully let you 'check the price on Amazon' for just about anything...

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#188

Post by wenincode » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 6:30 PM UTC

karolisram wrote: post #139

Jorge1o1 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truly worrying development is when those same Medium posts start circling HN. I’m not trying to be elitist, but what I enjoy about HN is seeing truly novel and interesting content, and every “crappy” article on the front page bumps an interesting one downwards into oblivion.

I’m ashamed to say that was me at some point. On top of that, those articles did nothing to further my career. All that mattered so far is my past experience, projects and how well I can (leet)code. Now if I start blogging again, it will have to be purely out of intellectual curiosity.

I think this is the same situation a lot of people find themselves in. I would say I'm the same. The further along I get in my career the more I find I'm interested in learning or exploring for my own good or interests, rather than some fake sense of credibility I got in the past.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#189

Post by ShroudedNight » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 6:31 PM UTC

cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #133

Carpetsmoker wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 5 years ago I attended a local code meetup and someone gave a presentation about this new TypeScript thing. He basically just explained the basic syntax, concepts. etc. A bit boring, but not the worst I've seen. Then in the Q&A someone asked a "In our experience, we've had problems with X, what's your take?" (I've forgotten what X was specifically), and the guy replied with "well, actually, we haven't really us…

>The entire talk seemed pretty useless to me. To you. On the flip side, it provided an introductory level overview of a concept many watching/attending may not have looked into themselves, or were thinking of looking into. It also provided a different form of introduction, which could be valuable for attendees with a learning style preference different to that of look-at-a-how-to or check-out-the-docs. >the guy repli…

If I go to a talk about a piece of technology, I expect the presenter to have enough experience with it to be able to provide me with a means of determining where I am situated in said technology's landscape, and what frame of reference is required to evaluate how to move about that landscape.

It doesn't matter how eloquent and thorough the introductory tutorial is, if the presenter has not experienced the technology sufficiently to have accumulated a few scars[1], they will not have the ability to convey the relative importance of the various aspects of the introduction, with which can be modified simply as a matter of taste, and which should be followed unless very careful consideration of global engineering context, and a full appreciation of the consequences.

If you are unable to meet that bar, at the very least, your abstract should make that abundantly clear out of respect for your audience.

[1] or at least have the experience to say that normally they would have expected to get bitten by something by their point in usage, but the technology meets their requirements so thoroughly that it has been particularly smooth sailing.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#190

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 6:31 PM UTC

dgellow wrote: post #112

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,…

IMHO the worst is that lot of young people actually consume, like and share that SEO/marketing stuff and spread it around without much thoughts. That’s the most popular dev content you will find on dev.to, medium, YouTube (for some reasons dev related videos became huge last year), and other publishing platforms. They don’t just generate useless content, they in fact have a public for it, thus little reason to stop.

My life became a lot better when I stopped reading towards data science (on Medium). It was just so much terrible tutorial content which was not only wrong, but actively misleading.