The perils of programmer education in the bazaar

1. Create a "subweb". It is composed of the following

1A. A new specification for the publishing of information in complete form ( read structured content published together with templates to present them )

1B. Both server and client systems that implement the new specification over some sort of modified http but without using current DNS

1C. A free distributed un-filtered un-policed distributed DNS alternative

1D. A complete hierarchical index of all content existing in the new system

1E. A free distributed search engine allowing submission of content within the new system.

2. Make it clear the new system is for free content only

3. Disallow advertisements on it entirely

4. Tie in accurate hashing and allow people to dedicate as much hosting power as they are willing ( either to the content itself or index data to what hashes represent what )

5. Make it entirely secure with a public/private key system allowing people to establish meaningful identities within a system where their content is copied eternally.

6. Use the new system yourself to publish meaningful non-shit information and encourage your friends to do the same

By the way I really like your article and I think you are pointing out a crucial problem spot on that most people are oblivious to.

The easiest way to think of what must be done is just to look at what libraries are. Organizing information has been done by libraries for thousands of years and has a fairly established sensible process. ( which is being ignored by the internet )

1B: named-data networking, camlistore, ipfs.io, bittorrent's web -- very easy to censor since all content is uniquely identified by a hash

1C: ?

1D: Usenet, Wikipedia, Wikidata

1E: technically difficult, see history of YaCY and http://juretriglav.si/an-open-distributed-search-engine-for-...

2: Wikipedia, but content is rejected under arcane citation policy

3: Wikipedia, but content is rejected under arcane citation policy

4: http://ipfs.io & https://crowdprocess.com/

5. blockchain publishing

6. standard challenge of bootstrapping user-generated content in any new online network

The role and funding of libraries have changed over time and across cultures, e.g. being associated with cities or nations, being associated with universities and churches. Current libraries are struggling to retain access to book stacks, e.g. look at the history of the successful community fight to prevent the flagship NYC library from removing many of its books.

Are they really though? On what basis?

99% of my best work can't form part of my portfolio. I spend 2 hours of my own time on L&D each week day. Maybe 30 minutes of it is on projects I could present. In a year that's ~120 hours max. I'm not going to be doing anything really impressive from a portfolio POV with less than a month of full time work put into it.

Even worse is the trend I'm seeing where people drop the Learning from L&D altogether so they can invest more time into presentable projects. It is stunting their growth as developers... even as it improves their hireablility.

> 1. Community is absolutely a weasel word when you're using it to lump together people from many different backgrounds and speak on behalf of them, or to act as if your particular sense of identity is representative of a whole group.

Help me find a better word for what I'm trying to say here: When I say "as a community" I mean, "as people who ought to be concerned about the social impact of our decisions as much as the economics and personal motivations"

> 2. Nothing is bad about a flea market. I just would like to be able to also have public non-commercial spaces for learning, and have them be well funded and supported too. I meant it literally when I say the current model works too well economically, and so there is less incentive to make long-term investments in educational resources that are explicitly for the common good.

> 3. It comes down to economics and social capital. Those who have gained notoriety through luck, connections, or money, tend to have their signal amplified indefinitely.

Yes, if someone really starts being malicious in what they do they will eventually lose their reputation, but it's a slow process and so those who get into that position tend to stay there. This is the nature of a competitive environment, whereas a cooperative environment intentionally makes adjustments to mitigate that effect. It's a little hard to explain because we have so many examples of the former and so few of the latter.

> 4. We agree, and I said that a few times in the article. It wasn't just for rhetorical purposes. I'm saying, if the current model is an improvement and evolution of a worse model that existed in the past, maybe we can still think about a new paradigm shift that is much better than what we have now.

But honestly, I'd be perfectly satisfied with comfortable co-existence between the commercialized education model. Even if 80% of our work was indirectly or directly tied to commercial promotion, it'd be nice if 20% of our resources could exist in the commons.

> 5. Not referring to developer tools here, I'm talking about developer education. There are plenty of "learn to code" things that are not effective, but because they're marketed well, they make plenty of money. In addition of these, there are plenty of "how to make money as a coder" things, etc.

There are also plenty of examples of open source tools that are poorly documented or designed, yet due to their popularity or entrenchment, spawn a business of consultants and educators to teach people commercially to use these things, without contributing the materials back to the commons under free documentation licenses. This is valuable work and shows that our marketplace is semi-efficient, but it's not socially optimal. The socially optimal result is for the information to be released as free documentation.

> In summary:

I guess my thesis missed you, because that's not what I meant to say at all. What I said is, "the world is unequal, and so it will tend to favor a tiny minority of privileged folks unless we actively seek to balance things".

For my own part, I've spent the last five years creating what may be the largest collection of open source learning materials for Ruby programmers in the world (find it at practicingruby.com). If you google "infrastructure automation", one of our articles is the top hit. If you google "actor model", one of our articles is on the front page. Neither of these articles were written by people with sizable followings or influence on the internet.

I paid these folks for their work, helped them shape and edit their content, and gave them access to a much larger audience than what they would have reached on their own. My own name does not appear on their work, nor does anything promoting some third party product or service.

People do pay for Practicing Ruby. Not commercial sponsors, but readers and community supporters. It'd be nice to see a few dozen similar publications on various topics, and for the model and motivation to be well understood and supported.

The problem I have is that this kind of thinking about publishing is something people never even give a passing thought... so as someone trying to do something different, I am constantly fighting an uphill battle.

I don't want to overstate my own role in making a difference here... I view my own project as a baby step, one of many necessary to make the kind of changes I'd like to see in the world. But at least I'm trying to stand up for my principles by putting the ideas into practice.