A quasi- bell curve function, is it not? Could paraphrase "on average, content is average". Not trying to be facetious. But sifting out large quantities of general dross has been a common requirement 'in tech' since before the days of perusing CDROMs full of shareware on dial-up bulletin boards.
Most tech content is bullshit (2020)
91–100 of 169 posts
Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)
#92True, but most content in general is bullshit. Most scientific publications is BS published for the sake of pumping your numbers. Most student memoire is BS to pass the exam. Most financial analyses, most TV journal reporting, most tweets, most books are BS. Ever read doctors or lawyers specialized magazines? Most pages are BS on top of BS. Paid content, content produced to fill space, making volume, low quality auth…
HN has decent technical discussions and some really good historical/personal anecdotes. Otherwise, it falls short and lacks in ideological diversity. And there is also bullshit here.
What wound proper ideological diversity look like? Or, which ideologies are underrepresented which would make this a better place, in your opinion?
It doesn’t seem like a monoculture to me: depending on the topic there is usually at least two or three significantly different viewpoints. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to have more, but it doesn’t jump out at me as a glaring deficiency.
Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
You get a lot more views for a video on how to index a column in MySQL than for how to approach evaluating your needs and choose a suitable database. The latter would be outdated in a few years as new technologies emerge, while the former can be padded with enough fluff to show two adverts. So we end up with the content you know today, rather than what you'd really like to see. It's good to remember this and interact…
The latter is also hard to google, you can't exacly ask google "what database to pick with this and that constraints and capabilities"
That is the sort of thing I'd think LLMs (with suitable training data, that's not overrun with promotional material) would be good at. I've had ChatGPT recommend technologies to me before that I hadn't thought of or didn't know (much) about.
Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)
#94I think HN is a madhouse. Any article I click on, there's things I've never heard of that sound like made up techno-jargon, like programming languages which I've never seen used in a real job, let alone met anyone who uses them But I go to the comments and there's 150 people who all know every intimate detail of this technology already. Experts in the subject. I think most of you all are faking it
> I think most of you all are faking it The world is huge. We're all traversing different areas of interest and expertise. It makes sense that there are lots of different types of domain experts in our field. This is a great place where they tend to congregate together.
My thoughts exactly. Unsure why your comment is being downvoted…
Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)
#95I'd say this is partially because creating something genuinely original and free standing is a rare occurrence. You're usually coding against some api or framework or whatever...and that interaction leads to common patterns so copy pasting makes sense.
Perhaps that's the appeal people see in writing their own coding language? It's somewhat free standing
Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)
#96> Tutorials show harmful patterns. Try to find a sample SQL database, for any vendor, that does not employ artificial table primary keys. This was a requirement in the 1980s so that your queries would execute before the heat death of the universe, but that has not been the case for decades. Microsoft is particularly guilty of this. Artificial keys are an anti-pattern. (And, btw, there's a dearth of literature on why…
I literally just read a very convincing post, with good examples, on why relying solely on natural keys is rarely a good idea. Nothing in that repo convinced me otherwise (and alarm bells certainly went off when I saw a table called Species where the primary key was a varchar field "Species" with values like "cat" and "raccoon", neither of which are species at all).
Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)
#97I think HN is a madhouse. Any article I click on, there's things I've never heard of that sound like made up techno-jargon, like programming languages which I've never seen used in a real job, let alone met anyone who uses them But I go to the comments and there's 150 people who all know every intimate detail of this technology already. Experts in the subject. I think most of you all are faking it
> I think most of you all are faking it.
I think you're insecure about the extent of things you know nothing or so little about.
It's normal but not an attractive trait to project.
Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)
#98One devious form of bullshit is always using the simplest of examples to prove out an architecture pattern and call it a day. I’ve lost count on how many times I’ve seen patterns with glaring open questions and pitfalls the author avoids. Then the cacophony of likes follow from folks who’re likely very early in their career or hobby and don’t know any better. This is very prevalent on iOS development blogs as authors…
I feel like classic object oriented tutorials talking about fruits and apples with no connection to actual apps you'd build are ones to add to this pile
In the same vein, I'd love to see more articles about recursion that don't even mention, let alone demonstrate, solving factorials. There's gotta be something else.
Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)
#99This article is pretty ironic because it's just a low effort post that also happens to be giving terrible advice.
Re: Most tech content is bullshit (2020)
#100One devious form of bullshit is always using the simplest of examples to prove out an architecture pattern and call it a day. I’ve lost count on how many times I’ve seen patterns with glaring open questions and pitfalls the author avoids. Then the cacophony of likes follow from folks who’re likely very early in their career or hobby and don’t know any better. This is very prevalent on iOS development blogs as authors…
I feel like classic object oriented tutorials talking about fruits and apples with no connection to actual apps you'd build are ones to add to this pile
Oh man, who can forget the interview questions back in the nineties. I go to an interview after spending all week writing trading systems in C++ and it’s always “let’s say you are building a car, how would you structure the classes?”
LMAO, I always failed. Good times.