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Most tech content is bullshit

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Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#371

Post by dntbnmpls »

whack wrote: post #279

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? F…

> 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.

Except that the "subject matter experts" have a horrible track record. Also, global warming proponents misrepresent the skepticism. Nobody is really questioning the warming of the earth. People are questioning how much man is responsible for it. After all, the "globe" has been warming for thousands of years before industrialization. There are "subject matter experts" who believe the warming is mostly a natural phenomenon. There are even fringe "subject matter experts" who believe the earth will cool. You aren't a cynic, you are just agenda driven.

> Want to get good medical advice? Find two highly regarded medical specialists and ask them independently for a diagnosis and treatment plan.

Where and which ones? The one's that say you don't need to wear masks or the one's that say you need to wear masks?

I won't bother with the rest. All you are saying is believe and trust authority. But the problem with that was a time when "experts" believed in global cooling, medical experts believed in blood letting, political experts believe in racism, financial experts believe in subprime loan derivatives, etc. Blindly believing authority also tends to cause a lot of problem. The problem with the "experts" in your list is that it has become so politicized and corporaticized that one has to be skeptical by default.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#372

Post by timwaagh »

Does the fact that this, 'everything is bs' article by a junior developer is taken so seriously on this forum have anything to do with the fact that the author looks like a gorgeous hacker from a science fiction movie? Or maybe just that she has a female name? I was just discussing that with my roommate in the kitchen. My roommate is of the opposite opinion that women get taken less seriously. And I don't want to hate on OP obviously. But I want to ask what do you think?

I do think it was well-written and the writing kind of saves the content. Besides there's absolutely nothing wrong with looking good. We might need a bit more of that in tech. So I'd encourage her to continue blogging.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#373

Post by openfuture »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #331

There's a particular brand of young developer where every opinion comes from a blog post, talk or HN comment. They have strong views on many different topics and believe that they're knowledgeable and smarter than the average developer^[1]. The only issue? They don't have actual experience to back this up. Because not only is most tech content bullshit, the small percentage that isn't BS may not apply to their situat…

Being young is hard, no need to judge to harshly, often a rivalrous blogpost-driven discussion can be turned into a cooperative exploration, which is exactly a way for them to gain the experience.

Quiet, or at-arms-length, dismissal hurts self-confidence and reinforces this blogpost-driven defense mechanism.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#374

Post by afc »

ProZsolt wrote: post #336
azemetre wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some high quality books you’d recommend that are somewhat recent (last ten years)? The only ones I can say, that I’ve also read, are YDKJS and Secrets JavaScript Ninja (work in web, but willing to read anything, good information is good information regardless of the tech).

Pro Git, Coders at Work both are ~10 years old. A recent one is Site Reliability Engineering published in 2016

Whoah, it's already ~4 years since the SRE book... How time flies.

I wrote two of the chapters in the SRE book but I have very mixed feelings about them. I'm glad that I got a chance to talk openly about some of the work I've been doing for the last decade, but I felt that, in the end, I couldn't devote to my chapters as much time as I would have liked, so I don't feel as proud about them as I would have liked. Boy, this really took soooo much time!

I don't know what I'm trying to say, I guess just that I find seeing someone praise the book interesting. What were your favorite chapters?

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#376

Post by f0rfun »

adamzapasnik wrote: post #114

Personally, my favourite one is seeing 1000th tutorial post on React.

Hey c'mon, back in elementary school, every cohort has at least written about their favorite past-time during writing classes. Just because the subject/title is the same, it doesn't mean the writing is the same. Every writer ends up with a style of their own and as a teacher, it was mostly a joy to read. ;) The only reason why there isn't a 1000th tutorial on Favorite Past-time is because there wasn't high speed, unlimited internet back then and students weren't allowed to use the computers back then. ;)

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#377

Post by tonystubblebine »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #333
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…

I make a living selling iOS development courses at high prices, so I can tell you that the we didn't lose the paid ecosystem. I can't talk about book publishers like O'Really, and probably the market for books shrank. But I have several competitors that sell self published ebooks. The plethora of free content you find online is not always a good thing for everyone. As the author of the article says, most tech content…

Do you have a link? I'd like to check them out.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#378

Post by logicprog »

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…

The problem with physical programming books - and don't get me wrong, I love physical books to a fault - is that they're easily made outdated, either with new versions of the same software, or the software gets replaced, or new best practices arise. Then you have to buy another version of the book. In addition to this, which basically makes physical programming books a nonstarter already, you have the issue that books aren't easily searchable or copy-pasteable.

Really, there's not much of a reason to have physical programming books anymore; it's just not practical, whatever the level of quality you get elsewhere. And you seem to have left out official documentation and stuff, which is getting really good imo.

The only reason for having a physical programming book is for totally timeless ideas, like algorithms and data structures textbooks, or introductory books to concepts like compilers.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#379

Post by logicprog »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #354
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…

Perhaps part of the problem is that books are hard to search? It may well be a bad habit, but I frequently don't learn new technologies through a concerted effort. Instead, there's just something I want to do, and I google it, and after doing that a bunch I eventually learn a lot.

I feel like that method of discovery is how I learn best, because I learn WHY something is the way it is, and how it's actually used outside of toy examples. Plus, it's just how most people are built to learn.

And yes, books not being searchable is basically THE reason I never use programming books.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#380

Post by twy8392 »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #331

There's a particular brand of young developer where every opinion comes from a blog post, talk or HN comment. They have strong views on many different topics and believe that they're knowledgeable and smarter than the average developer^[1]. The only issue? They don't have actual experience to back this up. Because not only is most tech content bullshit, the small percentage that isn't BS may not apply to their situat…

I'm in this comment and I don't like it.
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