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>> "the world keeps making more people" Well said. A corollary is that Joel was unfairly labeled a "blogger" even though he never really blogged. A blog is a
by portman 17y ago
>> "the world keeps making more people"
Well said. A corollary is that Joel was unfairly labeled a "blogger" even though he never really blogged.
A blog is a reverse chronological list of short posts. Readers often assume a kind of exponential decay of usefulness, where old blog posts are far less interesting and relevant than new ones. Consequently, tech bloggers keep posting the same content, as if to say pay attention to this, it's still important.
What we really need is a new label for content like Joel's, one that doesn't carry any negative stigma for text written long ago. I have no suggestions for what that might look like, but I have to imagine there's something better than the status quo, which is:
(1) People keep posting the same stuff, and
(2) I send around a giant, growing list of old articles to every newly minted CS graduate I meet
- _delirium 17y agoNot formatting exclusively as a blog might help. In Ye Olden Statick HTML Days, sites with mainly essay-like content usually had some sort of organization: by topic, by theme, by importance, or some combination. They often also had a reverse-chronological list of essays on a page called "updates" or "recent additions" or "sorted by date" or something similar, but it wasn't the only or even primary way of displaying the content, and some sites didn't have an updates page at all. But blogs, including Joel's, display the "updates" page as if it were the main website. There are sometimes other views, like by tag, or on Joel's by topic in the sidebar, but they're positioned as clearly secondary, just pointers into the primarily-chronological blog. They aren't the default display, and posts are still prominently formatted with the date, as if they were journal entries--- on Joel's blog, the posting date is even on the same line as the title, in font that's just as big.
- tl 17y agoWhat we really need is a new label for content like Joel's Collection of essays?