Comment by richardwhiuk

Comment by richardwhiuk 9 days ago

8 replies

As a reader, people writing to learn about something irritates me when it's not clearly flagged that the writer has almost zero experience using the thing they are writing about.

There's so many articles in tech where the writer probably has less experience with something than literally anyone who will read their post, and it means there's effectively a content farm of what a new software engineer will learn in their first few months (if not years) on the job, written by software engineers in their first few months, with effectively no net information.

simonw 9 days ago

I'll offer the opposite perspective. People writing about stuff that they are currently learning is often better, because they have a much clearer model of what's obvious and what isn't.

Someone with 20 years of experience with a technology will usually have a much harder time re-connecting with that beginner's mindset and doing a great job of providing the information that other newcomers most need to understand.

That's not to say that there isn't plenty of junk content out there, but I blame that more on inexperienced writers than on people who are writing about technology that they don't have a great deal of experience with.

A great writer should be able to write about something while they're learning while still producing content that's genuinely useful.

  • Groxx 9 days ago

    But they should still present themselves accurately, because at that stage they don't know what they don't know and they may be misleading people without realizing it.

    • simonw 9 days ago

      This is why I like the TIL format. Saying "Today I Learned" is a great shorthand for "I'm not an expert and I may have missed something but here's what I've figured out so far..."

    • no-exist 9 days ago

      One could be skeptical and not take everything written on the internet as the source of truth.

      I like to utilise the socratic method while reading about something, I want to understand deeply.

  • syndicatedjelly 9 days ago

    There are some topics that we need more expert voices on, because the subject matter is genuinely complicated and requires a veteran hand to guide people through. Otherwise we end up with a bunch of "expert beginners" sitting on their local maxima of understanding and thinking they are at the pinnacle of understanding. Some of us really do want to hear how experts think, imperfect as their explanations may be. Dev-fluencers are already taking over the space with their absolute nonsense gish-galloped everywhere for that sweet YouTube $$$

    • rustystump 9 days ago

      huh, dev-fluencers, I worked briefly with one and I never knew there was a name for what he did, gish-galloped. Amazing.

  • stogot 9 days ago

    “The curse of knowledge” is what you’re describing

rustystump 9 days ago

I imagine you are speaking of the trend of medium like articles where someone writes a "guide" on how to use a trendy tool rather than a blog post about something someone did with a tool. It is why I usually ignore anything on a blogging platform.

I LOVE reading dev blogs about the journey of making something. I understand the frustrations when you know they are doing it "wrong". But, more often than not, for me at least, I always learn something new.