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Most tech content is bullshit

aleksandra.codes

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Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#191

Post by phkahler »

>> Believe in yourself. Your solutions are not any worse than the ones on the internet.

This needs to be clarified. If taken literally then people will never improve and Joe average will continue to post bullshit on the internet.

Most solutions are probably comparable to much of what is on the internet, but that doesnt make it ok. We need to filter what we see on the internet. If you learn a new concept that's good, and maybe it's what you need. The key is to keep trying to do better while looking out for fads.

I've seen a lot of change over the years regarding big new paradigms. Some I tried, some I tried and passed on (Java) only to see them fade. Maybe I'm ready to start a blog ;-)

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#192

Post by ori_b »

nippoo wrote: post #185

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 ment…

> Counter-argument: coming up with your own, carefully considered solutions to every technical challenge is absurdly time-consuming.

You should really understand the problem you're trying to solve. Once you understand the problem, evaluating a solution is not so hard.

And implementing a solution without understanding it is negligence that will bite you in prod sooner or later.

https://blog.nelhage.com/post/computers-can-be-understood/

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#193

Post by ricardo81 »

vbezhenar wrote: post #164
arp242 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet is a big bucket where everyone drops all sorts of stuff in. Some people drop in gold nuggets, sometimes even diamonds, many other people drop in less valuable materials, and some dump in a torrent of bodily fluids. Our current solution is to rely on magical black box algorithms to give us the diamonds, but it's been creaking for a while. I'm not sure how to make this better: one person's turd is another…

Old school links might be a solution. I remember back in the day those blog websites which contained "links" page to the websites that owner likes and recommends. It's true P2P solution and does not require anything to invent. If you own a website and know some rare but valuable gems, just share them. Someone will find them. I think that's how Internet should really work. As a side effect, it should really help Googl…

Yes. Many website owners are too scared to link out because they're worried it'll penalise their rankings in Google. If you have hundreds of outbound links they can also be a pain to manage since so many domains get recycled into something else.

But I fully agree, people should be creating their own ecosystems with links, rather than keeping huge portals happy.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#194

Post by azeirah »

jedberg wrote: post #176
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. H…

I would actually really like it if you would share some more high quality tech blogs!

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#195

Post by ozim »

jdauriemma wrote: post #163

I agree with the problem presented by the author, but not necessarily with the solution. If blind acquiescence to random blogs and forums is a sin, then so is blind acquiescence to one's own limited experience. Most categories of software problems have already been solved. Being a "creator," in the truest sense of the word, is therefore rare. Most of the time, when we endeavor to "create" instead of "consume," we are…

I would say author meant not "create from scratch" as in "reinvent the wheel", more like be a creator who is making conscious choices. You can still be a creator by making a remix using samples created by other people. Difference is that you just don't blindly copy-paste with a bit of tweaking so it "fits", but to know what you do.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#196

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

reidjs wrote: post #175
dgb23 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I dunno. I'm pretty technical, in a data sciencey kind of way, and a lot of my career success has been explaining things relatively simply and accurately.

The combination of the two facets is much more useful than either alone.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#197

Post by bartread »

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,…

> I believe part of problem is Google SEO.

This and the fact that Google search is actually as dumb as a sackful of hammers.

Don't get me wrong, for the longest time Google's results were "good enough", but Google has no real concept of the quality of a result (they've tried and it worked for a while - e.g., PageRank). Still, fundamentally their algorithms aren't smart enough to figure out whether any given piece of content is intrinsically worthwhile.

That's really important in a world where most content is, regardless of Google's guidelines, primarily written for the benefit of GoogleBot, to harvest clicks or drive traffic.

Unfortunately Google has literally zero incentive to change this situation (because they're making an insane amount of money off the back of the status quo), so they won't[1].

Logically then, the time is ripe for a new search engine to disrupt but the problem - that of determining intrinsic worth - is really hard to solve, so as yet nobody has, and Google still reigns supreme as the most popular search engine.

[1] It is also possible that I'm being too harsh here: they might be trying to change it - perhaps because they're worried about eventually being disrupted - but, as noted in the following paragraph, the problem is REALLY hard.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#198

Post by lowbloodsugar »

I have seen first hand two people getting hired (I did not interview them) who had reasonable blog posts and who, once they arrived at a desk, could not program. (Fortunately the second time I was in a position to change the hiring process).

I have also worked with several people whose skill was sounding clever. One liked to read MSDN magazine, and then regurgitate the talking points to the CEO and CTO, who liked to trot him out in front of potential investors and customers. The content was just advertising Microsoft products utterly inappropriate for our startup, and eventually the company died after failing to deliver feature after feature because of vast over-engineering.

There are communication skills and then there are programming skills. Being good at either one is rare. So statistically if you meet someone who is good at talking or writing about coding then, absent any other evidence, that actually tells you nothing about whether or not they can code. Script kiddies are still alive and well, and some of them are Blog Kiddies now.

Yet, though it is a small intersection, it is not empty.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#199

Post by xellisx »

Carpetsmoker wrote: post #74
tuyguntn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

after working at couple of startups, I also noticed worrying trend. * 21 years old marketer writing about life crisis in 40s * fashion blogger explaining is Teflon harmful or not (come on, fashion and chemistry?) * 18 years old student who never immigrated to another country or studied abroad writing about how difficult is immigrant life and what to look for in different country and many more similar content.

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…

If I can find the content online and not have to deal being around of bunch of people, I'll just save my money.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#200

Post by twic »

jedberg wrote: post #176
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. H…

> I think that's a really sad and cynical view.

It doesn't matter if it's sad and cynical, it matters if it's true.

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