6 ms·

This can't be overstated. If you dump a pile of acronym diarrhea on someone from a bunch of dead technologies and get upset when you get a blank stare, it is 10

by hueving 11y ago

This can't be overstated. If you dump a pile of acronym diarrhea on someone from a bunch of dead technologies and get upset when you get a blank stare, it is 100% your own fault for lacking the communication skills or abstraction skills to separate useless jargon from important concepts.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
brianmwaters_hn 11y ago
This is an attitude I see more and more of today, and I think it's unfortunate. The slides in question aren't "a pile of acronym data;" they're made of lingo that would be recognizable to anyone who works in the field of networking - even if they don't understand the specifics of the protocols in question. At any rate, the author's complaint isn't that "kids these days" haven't heard of all these acronyms, it's that they haven't learned any of the technical details behind those acronyms, and that those details are still relevant. Finally, I have a bone to pick with the "it's the older generations' responsibility to educate the younger generation" idea that I hear so often. At the end of the day, it's everyone's own responsibility to educate themselves, and we all know there's plenty of materials available for that.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  "Finally, I have a bone to pick with the "it's the older generations' responsibility to educate the younger generation" idea that I hear so often. At the end of the day, it's everyone's own responsibility to educate themselves, and we all know there's plenty of materials available for that." I'm on your side of the discussion overall but that's unrealistic. It took me a decade to get so much of this knowledge and wisdom out of papers on programming, OS design, networking, security, etc. I just found some more foundational work in past months that should've been in every classroom for its relevance but nobody's heard of it. The problem is that the stuff is scattered all over the place and not in pure form at all. There's books, papers, brochures, lectures, etc. These might have good details, fluff, or a varying mixture of each. Many great works can only be found behind paywalls (IEEE, ACM). Others are on academic sites, specific blogs, or places like CiteseerX where you have to know what you're looking for ahead of time. Our field is anything but a clean, integrated presentation of what really mattered, matters, and might matter. It's a huge, scattered mess that we expect new crowd to just automagically sort through and discover necessary stuff. Prior generations certainly have some responsibility to make that easier rather than harder. I do my part with posts here and elsewhere directing people to specific techs that solved (or nearly so) the problems they are talking about. Need a more thorough solution, though, for the various sub-fields of I.T. before I'll blame the newcomers for prior generation's mess.
  - brianmwaters_hn 11y ago
    Hm, I agree that there's a lot scattered out there, but I hope that there's some room for exploration (and maybe specialization) somewhere in the noise. I actually have an interesting perspective on this, being completely self-taught, before returning to university as an adult to get a computer science degree. There are pros and cons to both sides of the self-taught vs. teacher-taught thing, though I'll make my bias clear up front: I spent a lot of years reading books and messing around with stuff; now, when I hear college students complain that a teacher "isn't a clear lecturer" or "didn't answer my question well," my tendency is to say "there's a book and an Internet out there, suck it up and get to studying, buddy," though I realize that attitude isn't perfect for everyone.
    - nickpsecurity 11y ago
      " when I hear college students complain that a teacher "isn't a clear lecturer" or "didn't answer my question well," my tendency is to say "there's a book and an Internet out there, suck it up and get to studying, buddy,"" I get that and mostly agree with it. Exception being the people who learn best with the help of others (esp face-to-face). They don't learn the hard stuff well with text but they're valuable once they learn it. The other exception would be the topics where having a pro at hand can greatly simplify the learning process mostly due to nature of topic itself. In most situations, you're totally right. People just aren't putting in effort. I think the stuff with lots of historical baggage of unknown usefulness seems like unjustifiable effort to many in IT. So, I don't throw them into that category if it's such a thing rather than their own skill set. Now, if they didn't know essential networking skills and griped that nobody told them, I might link to your comment followed by a back hand.
    - cbd1984 11y ago
      > when I hear college students complain that a teacher "isn't a clear lecturer" or "didn't answer my question well," my tendency is to say "there's a book and an Internet out there, suck it up and get to studying, buddy," Which raises the question of what the lecturer is even standing around talking for. Isn't it just a waste of their own and everyone else's time if they aren't good at doing what they attempt to do? If someone is a good researcher and lousy in the classroom, why make them teach classes and waste everyone's time?
- hueving 11y ago
  There are an order of magnitude more failed technologies than there are successful ones and learning all of the successful ones is already a gargantuan task. Just because some crotchety old guy watched a particular one go up in flames doesn't mean that everyone he talks to about a concept needs to be subjected to an analogy only relevant to one failed subject. You are misunderstanding me if you think I suggested that old people need to educate young people. I'm suggesting that if concepts cannot be distilled from the technology and discussed on their own merit, don't bring them up because it means you don't actually understand them well enough. This guy is mad not because people couldn't understand concepts, he is mad that they didn't get his archaic analogies. It's like a car guy calling an engineer stupid for not know what engine was in a 52 Chevy.
  - brianmwaters_hn 11y ago
    So he's a "crotchety old guy" with an analogy relevant to just "one failed subject." You have absolutely no respect for your elders, do you? Also, the second sentence of your second paragraph makes no sense to me.
    - hueving 11y ago
      >You have absolutely no respect for your elders, do you? No, I have no respect for people that offer analogies via obtuse references and then look down on you for not getting it.
nickpsecurity 11y ago
I'll give you that. Someone called me on this in a security discussion by recommending people get a glossary. The terms were all recent and modern in this case but mainstream crowd apparently wasn't aware of any of them. So, I went back and explained each one so the reader would have context in the previous post. The vote count indicated that worked better. That's happened enough that I sent out a recommendation to a bunch of people in high security industry to straight up drop our terminology when addressing a wide audience, look up what they call everything we talk about, and go through a major revision process on each post to translate it to their language. Might be able to get adoption of some of the techniques that already solved so many problems but just have no awareness or willingness to understand how they're normally presented. Not sure how many are going to do that rather than say "it's not our fault they didn't Google (topic) 101 to get the basic terminology and foundations." I feel revision and avoiding acronyms particularly will help us but transferring the wisdom will still be an uphill battle. Especially with the Silicon Valley startups...
- brianmwaters_hn 11y ago
  Totally agree with everything you're saying, but I would point out the the article is not about addressing a lay audience, it's about addressing network engineers who are supposedly lacking some historical/technical knowledge of their own field of work.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    I expect network engineers to understand what they do day to day. Do they really need to understand the whole history of the field to do that? Mostly not: just specific things necessary for their jobs. Our economy and resources are sort of rigged in that direction. So, we might need to use a preemptive solution where we present various principles, tactics, pro's, and con's to them rather than a full history lesson they'll think is useless. Ideally, they'll learn it all. I've learned the world is rarely ideal. Need a practical alternative to ideal...
    - mentat 11y ago

by hueving 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

brianmwaters_hn 11y ago

This is an attitude I see more and more of today, and I think it's unfortunate. The slides in question aren't "a pile of acronym data;" they're made of lingo that would be recognizable to anyone who works in the field of networking - even if they don't understand the specifics of the protocols in question. At any rate, the author's complaint isn't that "kids these days" haven't heard of all these acronyms, it's that they haven't learned any of the technical details behind those acronyms, and that those details are still relevant. Finally, I have a bone to pick with the "it's the older generations' responsibility to educate the younger generation" idea that I hear so often. At the end of the day, it's everyone's own responsibility to educate themselves, and we all know there's plenty of materials available for that.

nickpsecurity 11y ago
"Finally, I have a bone to pick with the "it's the older generations' responsibility to educate the younger generation" idea that I hear so often. At the end of the day, it's everyone's own responsibility to educate themselves, and we all know there's plenty of materials available for that." I'm on your side of the discussion overall but that's unrealistic. It took me a decade to get so much of this knowledge and wisdom out of papers on programming, OS design, networking, security, etc. I just found some more foundational work in past months that should've been in every classroom for its relevance but nobody's heard of it. The problem is that the stuff is scattered all over the place and not in pure form at all. There's books, papers, brochures, lectures, etc. These might have good details, fluff, or a varying mixture of each. Many great works can only be found behind paywalls (IEEE, ACM). Others are on academic sites, specific blogs, or places like CiteseerX where you have to know what you're looking for ahead of time. Our field is anything but a clean, integrated presentation of what really mattered, matters, and might matter. It's a huge, scattered mess that we expect new crowd to just automagically sort through and discover necessary stuff. Prior generations certainly have some responsibility to make that easier rather than harder. I do my part with posts here and elsewhere directing people to specific techs that solved (or nearly so) the problems they are talking about. Need a more thorough solution, though, for the various sub-fields of I.T. before I'll blame the newcomers for prior generation's mess.
- brianmwaters_hn 11y ago
  Hm, I agree that there's a lot scattered out there, but I hope that there's some room for exploration (and maybe specialization) somewhere in the noise. I actually have an interesting perspective on this, being completely self-taught, before returning to university as an adult to get a computer science degree. There are pros and cons to both sides of the self-taught vs. teacher-taught thing, though I'll make my bias clear up front: I spent a lot of years reading books and messing around with stuff; now, when I hear college students complain that a teacher "isn't a clear lecturer" or "didn't answer my question well," my tendency is to say "there's a book and an Internet out there, suck it up and get to studying, buddy," though I realize that attitude isn't perfect for everyone.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    " when I hear college students complain that a teacher "isn't a clear lecturer" or "didn't answer my question well," my tendency is to say "there's a book and an Internet out there, suck it up and get to studying, buddy,"" I get that and mostly agree with it. Exception being the people who learn best with the help of others (esp face-to-face). They don't learn the hard stuff well with text but they're valuable once they learn it. The other exception would be the topics where having a pro at hand can greatly simplify the learning process mostly due to nature of topic itself. In most situations, you're totally right. People just aren't putting in effort. I think the stuff with lots of historical baggage of unknown usefulness seems like unjustifiable effort to many in IT. So, I don't throw them into that category if it's such a thing rather than their own skill set. Now, if they didn't know essential networking skills and griped that nobody told them, I might link to your comment followed by a back hand.
  - cbd1984 11y ago
    > when I hear college students complain that a teacher "isn't a clear lecturer" or "didn't answer my question well," my tendency is to say "there's a book and an Internet out there, suck it up and get to studying, buddy," Which raises the question of what the lecturer is even standing around talking for. Isn't it just a waste of their own and everyone else's time if they aren't good at doing what they attempt to do? If someone is a good researcher and lousy in the classroom, why make them teach classes and waste everyone's time?
hueving 11y ago
There are an order of magnitude more failed technologies than there are successful ones and learning all of the successful ones is already a gargantuan task. Just because some crotchety old guy watched a particular one go up in flames doesn't mean that everyone he talks to about a concept needs to be subjected to an analogy only relevant to one failed subject. You are misunderstanding me if you think I suggested that old people need to educate young people. I'm suggesting that if concepts cannot be distilled from the technology and discussed on their own merit, don't bring them up because it means you don't actually understand them well enough. This guy is mad not because people couldn't understand concepts, he is mad that they didn't get his archaic analogies. It's like a car guy calling an engineer stupid for not know what engine was in a 52 Chevy.
- brianmwaters_hn 11y ago
  So he's a "crotchety old guy" with an analogy relevant to just "one failed subject." You have absolutely no respect for your elders, do you? Also, the second sentence of your second paragraph makes no sense to me.
  - hueving 11y ago
    >You have absolutely no respect for your elders, do you? No, I have no respect for people that offer analogies via obtuse references and then look down on you for not getting it.

nickpsecurity 11y ago

I'll give you that. Someone called me on this in a security discussion by recommending people get a glossary. The terms were all recent and modern in this case but mainstream crowd apparently wasn't aware of any of them. So, I went back and explained each one so the reader would have context in the previous post. The vote count indicated that worked better. That's happened enough that I sent out a recommendation to a bunch of people in high security industry to straight up drop our terminology when addressing a wide audience, look up what they call everything we talk about, and go through a major revision process on each post to translate it to their language. Might be able to get adoption of some of the techniques that already solved so many problems but just have no awareness or willingness to understand how they're normally presented. Not sure how many are going to do that rather than say "it's not our fault they didn't Google (topic) 101 to get the basic terminology and foundations." I feel revision and avoiding acronyms particularly will help us but transferring the wisdom will still be an uphill battle. Especially with the Silicon Valley startups...

brianmwaters_hn 11y ago
Totally agree with everything you're saying, but I would point out the the article is not about addressing a lay audience, it's about addressing network engineers who are supposedly lacking some historical/technical knowledge of their own field of work.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  I expect network engineers to understand what they do day to day. Do they really need to understand the whole history of the field to do that? Mostly not: just specific things necessary for their jobs. Our economy and resources are sort of rigged in that direction. So, we might need to use a preemptive solution where we present various principles, tactics, pro's, and con's to them rather than a full history lesson they'll think is useless. Ideally, they'll learn it all. I've learned the world is rarely ideal. Need a practical alternative to ideal...
  - mentat 11y ago