Most tech content is bullshit • Hacker News Board

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#231

Post by watwut » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 7:04 PM UTC

aledalgrande wrote: post #223

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 think this problem expands to tech meetups. It is very difficult to find a quality meetup. Most people never used the tech and the presenters make gross errors. Most recent I remember was a person trying to explain why GraphQL is good for APIs, while showing code with crazy N+1s. Certainly didn't convince me. I'm not saying everyone should be an expert, but I would want the whole spectrum of experience represented.…

Meetups cater almost exclusively to younger people who want to learn something and socialize.

I don't think it is particularly wrong, but more experienced people tend to be older and less likely to have inclination or time to prepare talk or go to pub every week or so.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#232

Post by jedberg » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 7:04 PM UTC

pizza234 wrote: post #213

jedberg wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What's the point, exactly? That there is a certain number of engineers who have a mix of talent and resources (=time), so that they can exercise software engineering and high quality technical writing? They are an exception. Almost all the engineers I know (with one exception), who also have a regular life (roughly 40 hours engineering/week), have little time to dedicate to technical writing. As a consequence, it's n…

If those engineers are working 40 hours a week and are awake for about 110, what are they doing with their other 70 hours? Sure some of that is commuting, showering, etc., but presumably they have other activities.

For some people, their hobby is technical writing.

Saying that they are mutually exclusive would be like saying that being an engineer and doing puzzles is mutually exclusive because they both require a lot of mental effort.

Or being an engineer and a musician are mutually exclusive. It's a silly thing to assume that technical writing is somehow different from any other hobby.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#233

Post by jacobobryant » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 7:05 PM UTC

bartread wrote: post #197

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…

> 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

I'm sort-of trying to solve this with a recommender system approach.[1] Search isn't my primary objective; I'm mainly focusing on the case where you want to be made aware of relevant information on an ongoing basis but you aren't necessarily looking for something specific.

But that involves building up a ratings database of lots of different URLs. If it becomes really popular, I'd like to experiment with search. It could start with a "normal" search algorithm but then adjust the results based on rating data. E.g. "the top result for this query is X, but people with similar rating data to you always down vote that link, so we'll move that result down".

I've heard people complain about how Google gives you personalized search results sometimes, but I'm not sure if the approach is actually bad. Perhaps it could work if it was focused on from the start instead of bolted on.

[1] https://findka.com

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#234

Post by loughnane » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 7:05 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.

Also me, but I did have one (on tolerance analysis) that helped my career.

It made rounds in the professional circles I traveled in and established myself as, while not necessarily a leader, someone at least very fluent in a particular process.

This was also in 2010 though, so the social landscape Was quite different

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#235

Post by aledalgrande » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 7:06 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #226

aledalgrande wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't work 16 hours a day. Writing good content is a lot of effort, especially after 8 hours of coding. If you're churning out a post a week I would say that is already a lot.

> I don't work 16 hours a day. Exactly. You probably spend at least some time on a hobby. For some people their hobby is technical writing.

Yes, sure there are good devs who write good content. But what I'm saying is that if you spend most of your time writing, you definitely don't have the same experience as someone who's mostly doing work with code.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#236

Post by watwut » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

mrisoli wrote: post #144

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…

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 t…

It takes quite a lot of time to prepare talk and it is not like they would pay all that impressively.

So I think that repeated talks and intro talks are to be expected. Through I did not mind them, I used them to get idea about new thing X while I have time set aside for learning.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#237

Post by learc83 » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

gregmac wrote: post #214

alibarber wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Even though I generally prefer reading to watching, I've found in the past few years that YouTube is better for reviews, and I think it's actually because of this. If you don't actually recognize the channel, you can usually tell if it's worthwhile by subscriber count, the other (types of) videos they've posted, and usually just by watching for tens of seconds. Most paid reviews seem to say so (unlike written blogs),…

Youtube is better, but over the last few years, I've noticed that it's getting harder to find decent reviews, because the algorithm recommends so many fake review channels. It's better than a google search, but there's still so many terrible results to sort through.

Youtube's algorithm encourages video farms that upload frequently even if they recycle content. Ann Reardon discusses this problem as it relates to recipe video's frequently on her cooking channel.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#238

Post by watwut » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 7:17 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #113

jcims wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can barely speak in front of a crowd on something I’ve got 20 years experience in.

This is still something I really can't wrap my mind around. What is the key difference in early life between people who will speak authoritatively regardless of competence, across the spectrum to experts who can't or won't? I don't think Dunning-Kruger explains it because it's not like every shy expert used to be a gregarious beginner.

I think there is some personality difference, but also one of values.

Do you think or feel it is shameful for you to give introductory talk? Did you grew up in environment where such thing was mocked or did you grew up somewhere it was praised? Do you think it matters super much if someone in audiemce looks down on you or are you rather motivated by single person that likes you?

Do you think you need to be super awesome experienced speaker to make first public talk? Are you ok having public talk with primary purpose being to learn doing public talks?

These imo make the difference. It is not like there would be lines of experts wanting to talk.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#239

Post by weinzierl » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 7:17 PM UTC

ozim wrote: post #182

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 th…

>"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."

Many books are not much better. While blog posts are bloated for SEO purposes, books are bloated to reach their target page count.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#240

Post by softwaredoug » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

pizza234 wrote: post #213

jedberg wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What's the point, exactly? That there is a certain number of engineers who have a mix of talent and resources (=time), so that they can exercise software engineering and high quality technical writing? They are an exception. Almost all the engineers I know (with one exception), who also have a regular life (roughly 40 hours engineering/week), have little time to dedicate to technical writing. As a consequence, it's n…

I am in an odd position where I'm writing a book at the same time I'm writing a library the book uses.

It's a fascinating experience. How being a good writer and software engineer go hand in hand. If my library is not easy to understand, my book won't be succesful. I'm constantly going back to edit the library to make sure the book / related concepts can be grokked.

I feel this is a fairly general truism. Great software engineers are often technical writers. Both involve understanding what the 'reader' expects to see, needs to understand, and how the whole narrative/program fits together cohesively. I'd encourage anyone who wants to up their software engineering game to work on their writing skills first.