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Most tech content is bullshit

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Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#271

Post by RNCTX »

a-nikolaev wrote: post #227

A lot depends on the programming language used in the online tech materials. It's very hard to find anything worthy in Python or JS, because for many people it's their first language, and "teachers" are only one lesson ahead of their "students". On the other hand reading something explained in OCaml, Scheme, Erlang, Julia, D or similar niche and not hyped language can be of very high quality. C also tends to be good.…

This is just flat out false. You're showing your (lack of) age here.

The nature of niche languages is people who like them run to the next niche when the next niche springs from the aether. And when their blogs and youtube channnels die, so will they wither on the vine.

There has always been higher quality documentation for Python things than most languages, because as a community, Python encourages quality documentation by providing tools to help developers write it more efficiently. There are quite literally entire platforms that teach a complete beginner who has never written a line of code how to write javascript, for free.

There's a difference in having good documentation, and someone reading the documentation to you. Sounds like you're equating the latter with the former.

You realize C++ has been around since 1979, right?

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#272

Post by alephu5 »

Carpetsmoker wrote: post #98
behnamoh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"bullshit marketing"

I don't think all content marketing is bullshit. There are some companies that produce some pretty nice content, for example some of the in-depth Cloudflare stuff, but others as well. It's useful and interesting, but also content marketing.

Digital ocean write some really good articles too.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#274

Post by randompwd »

robocat wrote: post #243
randompwd wrote: post #173

> 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…

I hate to diagnose over the internet, but it is possible you have engineer’s blindness. This usually only happens to technically excellent developers. When an developer lacks some productivity, political, or teamwork skill, they sometimes simply don’t know that they are missing that skill (or they think it is a worthless skill), and can’t understand why someone else gets promoted over them. In this case, you could as…

Well, it could be. However, a family member who had years earlier excelled in a (non software) technical field before jumping to management positions then founder had given advise. Become excellent at $skills then move up. Good advise. Advise i'd pass on with the caveat that talking tech is so f*kin easy at 10,000 feet, be prepared to see less able people jump upwards before they're anywhere near ready.

edit: this was ~10 years ago at this stage. I've stayed hands-on technical by choice(in various roles) while the other jumped to "pseudo-leadership (incl. Thought Leadership©").

edit edit: By no means was he an idiot. Just cavalier.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#275

Post by tonystubblebine »

jedberg wrote: post #186
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.

Yes. I meant it lovingly. The feedback I got on my own OReilly book was intense!

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#276

Post by saalweachter »

MattGaiser wrote: post #179
zepto wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Give Sturgeon's Law some credit here.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#277

Post by itronitron »

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…

The Medium articles are a lot more entertaining if you read them out loud with a strong 'Valley' accent.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#278

Post by randompwd »

unsignedchar wrote: post #245
randompwd wrote: post #173

> 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…

I wonder if you know how he fared at Bezos company afterwards; presumably “the people above you in non-tech companies generally know less than shit” doesn’t apply there

Still there and I wouldn't be so sure. Fake it until you're high enough in an org then jump sideways to another gig(which is what he did).

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#279

Post by whack »

Call me a cynic, but the whole "think critically and figure it out for yourself" solution is inefficient at best, harmful at worst. Global warming skepticism is exactly the kind of thing that often occurs when people trust their own judgement more than that of subject matter experts.

There are very effective ways to get high quality recommendations, with minimal effort on your part. Want to get good medical advice? Find two highly regarded medical specialists and ask them independently for a diagnosis and treatment plan. Not two doctors next door. Not two doctors who published random blogs. Two doctors who are highly regarded by their peers and by the wider industry.

Want to get good financial advice? Do the same thing with financial advisors. Looking for good fitness advice? Do the same with fitness trainers or nutritionists. Looking for good software engineering advice? Do the same thing with developers.

Eventually the day will come when you have learnt and grown so much, that you are just as capable as the "highly regarded" experts. When that day comes, feel free to debate the merits of their arguments. But until then, don't try to be an expert at everything. Don't feel pressured to derive every single thing from first principles. That's just not scalable.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#280

Post by brightball »

jjice wrote: post #174
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…

I’m the same way. I prefer books because an expert had the opportunity to help you understand a subject from start to finish.

Stack Overflow is great for quick reference to small questions.

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