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Most tech content is bullshit

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Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#91

Post by dageshi »

raspyberr wrote: post #53

As are recipes. I don't understand why recipe blog writers want to be seen so much that they're willing to compromise their content. It's just a bunch of bullshit to pad out for SEO and then at the end the actual recipe.

The "padding" is for their existing followers who actually do want to read the padding (life stories,whatever) irrespective of the recipe itself. The recipe is advertisement to gain new followers from Google traffic. Merging both together works better than separating them out from the point of view of gaining more followers.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#92

Post by softwaredoug »

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…

Disagree. When I do work, I’m super excited and can’t help but want to share. I know lots of people that have a similar outlook to work that brings them joy. It lights you up and you want others to share in that light.

Paradoxically when NOT doing work I share less

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#94

Post by dgb23 »

_bxg1 wrote: post #66
dgb23 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not a psychologist but... No, in all seriousness I think this is one true factor. But I feel like this isn’t a bad thing on its own. The issue arises when authors don’t disclose their knowledge or competence. Saying stuff like: this is what I assume, this us what I don’t know etc. or just posing plain questions.

Right, but nobody's going to say any of those in a blog post. If you're going to the trouble to write a blog post you're probably making a statement . Even if it's ill-informed. There's another dimension to this too, which is that writing blog posts and coming off as knowledgeable can directly translate into career opportunities. As long as you aren't too wrong, there's a material incentive to putting stuff out there…

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.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#95

Post by goalieca »

aspenmayer wrote: post #45
_bxg1 wrote: post #13

From personal experience, including reading a lot of HN, I think programmers as a species are especially biased towards putting forth opinions in the hopes of being validated for our experience or intelligence, even when we know we don't know much about the subject. The fact that IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer) [but...] is a common enough statement in these circles to deserve its own acronym is telling. We often throw out…

Everyone was an expert online as far back as 20 years ago. Now look where we find ourselves. Time isn’t a flat circle; it’s a merry go round. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/03/technology/suddenly-every... https://web.archive.org/web/20181018000000/https://www.nytim...

When I first came across reddit (14 years ago?), it was almost a website for functional programming enthusiasts. Haskell was all the hype over there the way that rust seems to be all the hype over here. It felt more like a community of grad students with pseudo-academic blog posts hyping the latest ideas and research. At least that's how i remember it.

There was also a strong politics subreddit full of group-think but that wasn't what most people went there for I'd say. It was one of three subreddits if i recall.

The site definitely changed when users could create their own subreddits as that opened the board to just about every kind of person or group on the internet.

I believe sites would do best to specialize even at the cost of growth. I'm happy when hackernews sticks mostly to tech and doesn't silo us into specialized and moderated subreddits.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#96

Post by dpc_pw »

Oh, there's so much to unpack here...

Vast majority of my blogposts that have reached HN front page were ... inflamatory and controversial. The (IMO) wise content that isn't steering up the argument seems rather ignored.

... or it was about Rust. I love Rust, I really do, but I feel some of the things I wrote weren't really thaaaat worthwile, and it's just jumping on Rust bandwagon. SWE is mostly driven by fashion and trends, and not by merits.

I have a lot that I wish to share, but don't have to write it down in well-structured way.

The more you know, the more you realize the that right answer to everything is "it depends". And it's really hard to turn subtle context-dependent knowledge to something more universal that benefits broader reader. It's good to seek after most knowledgeable and skilled people you can find at your job and pick their minds whenever possible asking about opinions, experiences, and so on. The context is already there.

And in SWE as in anything complex it's just hard to verify any theory. Nothing is reproducible, really comparable. What worked for me don't have to work for you, and we don't even know why. Everyone, even if well informed and experienced, has just a fraction of the picture and is trying to deduce the whole as best as they can.

Then there's a whole thing that ... people in SWE aren't as smart and knowledgeable as they often think they are. Being Senior Software Engineer doesn't mean anything anymore. Oh, you did two bigger projects, and you think you know a lot, hmm? Even after a lifetime of practicing the craft, keeping up with the tech, languages, tools ... there's still so much to learn. And a big part of SWE is not the tech itself but psychology, management, business, social skills... .

My advice for people that are looking for great content ... "you have to dig through a lot of dirt to find a couple of gold nuggets", and "weird&niche" is efficient way to get familiar with new stuff: You're not going to learn a lot of if you only travel the mainstream paths. Learn Haskell, Forth, Lisp, write some side-projects using some really weird and niche tech just to get familiar with it and gain some new perspectives. You'll talk with people who have some interesting opinions and learn things that will be surprisingly useful even on the mainstream path.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#97

Post by Jorge1o1 »

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 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.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#98

Post by Carpetsmoker »

behnamoh wrote: post #18
toomuchtodo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Content marketing”

"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.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#99

Post by ryan29 »

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…

There's so many bad examples online that I can't imagine trying to learn development from scratch these days.

Re: Most tech content is bullshit

#100

Post by jcims »

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…

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