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Most tech content is bullshit

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Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#451

Post by trianglem »

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…

Yeah I went back to good old expert written books after years realizing that a lot of content on the internet, that is not paid for, is opinion and drivel and cannot be trusted.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#452

Post by trianglem »

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…

Absolutely. It’s question everything. Not question everything and replace the explanations you don’t like with personal, gut-feel views.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#453

Post by Leherenn »

oefrha wrote: post #184
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…

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…

JavaScript seems particularly bad at this, especially compared to something like C or C++ which I'm more used to.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#454

Post by cryptica »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #363
cryptica wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are too many bullshitters in the software industry. Years of experience helps but it's not sufficient to be a good developer. There are many terrible developers with 20+ years of experience and there are some great developers with only 10 years of experience. The number one characteristic that makes a developer great is their critical thinking ability. These developers don't blindly adopt tools and business pro…

Median competency in most professions will typically be quite low. In software this is exacerbated by the high pay, which attracts a lot of charlatans, and the fact that our industry has almost no professional standards (unlike say structural engineering). I’ve never thought it was much of a problem though, because it just makes it easier for the sufficiently competent to distinguish themselves.

>> because it just makes it easier for the sufficiently competent to distinguish themselves

Having worked in the blockchain space... I have seen seen the future and it looks nothing like you think. When a company has too many conmen. The most rewarded skill becomes conmanship.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#455

Post by AmericanChopper »

cryptica wrote: post #454
AmericanChopper wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Median competency in most professions will typically be quite low. In software this is exacerbated by the high pay, which attracts a lot of charlatans, and the fact that our industry has almost no professional standards (unlike say structural engineering). I’ve never thought it was much of a problem though, because it just makes it easier for the sufficiently competent to distinguish themselves.

>> because it just makes it easier for the sufficiently competent to distinguish themselves Having worked in the blockchain space... I have seen seen the future and it looks nothing like you think. When a company has too many conmen. The most rewarded skill becomes conmanship.

I have also worked in the blockchain space, and none of the blockchain companies I previously worked with still exist. I am most certainly not worried about fraudulent blockchain companies becoming a major part of the economy.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#456

Post by Scarbutt »

rotifer wrote: post #402
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).

Here are some books that have stood out for me. They cover some of the technologies that I either have to work with, or am personally interested in. Effective Java by Joshua Bloch Practical, actionable guidelines. The first edition was the best, the second was diluted somewhat by having to cover generics, in the third he admits that he doesn't really use Java much anymore... Despite that, it's well-written and still…

in the third he admits that he doesn't really use Java much anymore...

What does he uses now?

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#457

Post by azemetre »

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

Pro Git is something I've been meaning to read, as someone who my team considers a "git expert" (I'm the only one who knows how to rebase and handle conflicts thru mergetool on the CLI -_-).

I've heard great things about it, definitely need to add it to my queue.

The SRE book is also interesting. There was a conference recently where one of the authors gave a talk [1] about training. Really encouraged me to at least get the PDF.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iaNMMwozCc

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#458

Post by azemetre »

jakub_g wrote: post #302
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).

High Performance Browser Networking - it's 2013 but apart from new tech and higher speeds, the basics of networking remain the same (also available online since a recently at https://hpbn.co/ )

This looks cool. I use to work at a national ISP and really miss the world of network engineering, granted browsers are one aspect of it but it's a very unique industry compared to e-comm and marketing tech.

Thanks for the rec!

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#459

Post by rotifer »

Scarbutt wrote: post #456
rotifer wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are some books that have stood out for me. They cover some of the technologies that I either have to work with, or am personally interested in. Effective Java by Joshua Bloch Practical, actionable guidelines. The first edition was the best, the second was diluted somewhat by having to cover generics, in the third he admits that he doesn't really use Java much anymore... Despite that, it's well-written and still…

in the third he admits that he doesn't really use Java much anymore... What does he uses now?

I misremembered what he said in the preface. I thought he had said that he was using Java less often, but what he actually wrote was, "I still like Java, though my ardor has cooled a bit as the platform has grown."

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#460

Post by charlysl »

dredmorbius wrote: post #449
charlysl wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... As for the natural faculties within me, of which my writing is the proof, I feel them bending under the burden. My ideas and my judgement merely grope their way forward, faltering, tripping, and stumbling; and when I have advanced as far as I can, I am still not at all satisfied. I can see more country ahead, but with so disturbed and clouded a vision that I can distinguish nothing. And when I venture to write in…

Thank you! Yes, that is beautiful, true, and illuminating.

Thanks for reading, I was a bit worried about posting such a long quotation, but couldn't bring myself to butchering this marvel, would have felt like cutting a master painting. Just like Chrysippus.
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