8 ms·

I may very well be an old curmudgeon but am I the only one who doesn't like all this comic-y cutesy content? They seem to be a rebranded version of the old `Idi

I may very well be an old curmudgeon but am I the only one who doesn't like all this comic-y cutesy content? They seem to be a rebranded version of the old `Idiot's guide to X` which were ubiquitous in the '90s. Yes, I'm also talking about stuff like `Clojure for the brave and true` or `Learn you a X for the greater good`. Does anyone actually benefit from this content? I look at it and it seems to be targeted to 10 year olds. Are we as an industry getting dumber? For this specific subject, instead of reading about the `adventures of Certificat, Browserbird, and Compugter` can we just read something like https://hpbn.co/transport-layer-security-tls/ https://hpbn.co/transport-layer-security-tls/ ?

coin 8y ago
Way too obnoxious with all the comic stuff, I left after 20 seconds.
- stevekemp2 8y ago
  There are several "celebrity" bloggers who keep this trend alive. I find it annoying too, but better that than some of the other approaches which involve constant! Exclamation!! Marks everywhere!!! A few zine-style approaches manage to capture the worst of both worlds, but I guess if others find it endearing and cute then good luck to them!!
- alonmower 8y ago
  I made it decently far but the 6 frames of meaningless handshake pictures finally got me to close the tab in anger
Rotdhizon 8y ago
I think it has to do with who is reading. Some people learn better this way (myself included). I've seen many topics over the years explained in forms similar to this and it was very easy to understand opposed to just reading it out of a textbook. Although I'll admit that even this was done way too cutesy. They put far too many pictures with too small of text on each page, made it hard to follow along and keep focused. I need to be able to read fluently, small white text on a black background is hard on the eyes. You can find little snippets like this in many textbooks, but it's generally a single picture or two that are shown to better show the point made in the preceding text.
0x8BADF00D 8y ago
Dunno about the industry getting dumber, but they certainly are getting lazier when it comes to UX. I could barely read it for 10s before my eyes started hurting.
- vagab0nd 8y ago
  Same here. I don't necessarily hate the comic style. But for some reason this particular style makes it very hard to read and understand.
Nicksil 8y ago
I share a similar sentiment. Articles with an abundance of memes/gifs -- ones trying to be funny/cute, not contributing to the subject matter -- are placed in the same category. At best it adds clutter, but usually lends to distraction and/or frustration and moving on.
hannasanarion 8y ago
How dare educators attempt to entertain? Technology isn't only for the wealthy elite who have the time to sit and read hundreds of pages of jargon anymore. The internet is for everyone, not just us nerds.
- dooglius 8y ago
  On the contrary, this phenomenon seems pretty isolated to nerds/tech-interested-people. Are there any areas outside of technology where you have seen something presented in a similarly childish way?
  - chc 8y ago
    The reason these exist is because these topics are big and somewhat inaccessible, but they are relevant to people who wouldn't learn them in the normal course of their lives. You wouldn't expect to see as many for something that is commonly known in a given field and doesn't matter to people outside it, or things which are already quite accessible without trying to make them super-friendly. Here's an example that does something similar with the law: http://lawcomic.net/ http://lawcomic.net/ You'll notice that the law has the same characteristics I identified earlier in technology — it's very relevant to ordinary people, but it's large and inaccessible enough that most people don't really understand it and setting a law book in front of them wouldn't help.
- geezerjay 8y ago
  > How dare educators attempt to entertain? The content is harder to read and to follow, and concepts aren't as accessible. Even if it's an attempt at entertaining, this project falls very short of serving any educational purpose.
  - vaer-k 8y ago
    I really hate when people pretend their opinion is fact
    - 8y ago
dooglius 8y ago
I feel the same way. Another thing I've noticed along the same lines is companies and technologies named after words in "toddler speak" by adding -y or -ly to the end of a word (e.g. dog -> doggy). I initially chalked this up to the .ly TLD but that doesn't seem to be widely used nowadays. Maybe it started out that way and took on a life of its own?
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  > named after words in "toddler speak" by adding -y or -ly to the end of a word (e.g. dog -> doggy) Can you provide some examples of "toddler speak" involving the -ly suffix? I don't mean company or technology names -- words like "doggy", but using a -ly suffix.
  - shard 8y ago
    How about googly eyes?
    - thaumasiotes 8y ago
      The two theories I see for the etymology of "googly eyes" are (1) that the term descends from goggle + -y ( https://www.etymonline.com/word/googly https://www.etymonline.com/word/googly ); or (2) that the term is related to a comic strip character named Barney Google ( https://blog.retroplanet.com/googly-eyes/ https://blog.retroplanet.com/googly-eyes/ ). Neither theory involves a -ly suffix. They don't really involve the diminutive -y suffix either; that looks more like the adjective-forming -y suffix.
blowski 8y ago
For every old curmudgeon who hates this style, there's probably a young whippersnapper who loves it. No reason we can't have both.
- umanwizard 8y ago
  I don't think it's about age, as I remember hating this style when I started getting into programming around 15.
  - commandlinefan 8y ago
    I, too, was an old curmudgeon at 15. It's only been these last few years I've truly grown into it though.
- crispyambulance 8y ago
  Yes. Different strokes for different folks. Some people like the comics, some people like the naked horrific rfc docs (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2818 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2818) complete with the phony typewriter linebreaks. Many prefer something in between. Something for everybody.
Reedx 8y ago
> can we just read something like https://hpbn.co/transport-layer-security-tls/ https://hpbn.co/transport-layer-security-tls/ ? Yep, we have that option and lots of explanations like that already exist. This is a different approach to explaining the subject. I don't see how that's a problem. Personally I think they just went overboard with it (to the point of being distracting), but I get what they're trying to do and appreciate the effort - even if it's not for me. Kudos I say. Others might find it useful. Plus it could inspire someone else to explore another approach.
- anafh83 8y ago
  You are right. I'll be using this comic if I need to teach a 10 year old what https is.
- scrollaway 8y ago
  I mean, the OP's comic is just... really, really hard to read. It's not a medium problem, it's a layout/font/design problem. I think GP is just hating on the wrong thing. Comics are fine, and having that as well as the technical explanations, is fine. I agree with a commenter further down wrt. the immensely popular "For Dummies" series which manages to make various complex subjects more accessible. I also think this type of webcomic can be really well done. Chrome's webcomic springs to mind: https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/big_00.html https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/big_00.html
  - Reedx 8y ago
    Spot on. A few UX and editing passes would make a world of difference.
vaer-k 8y ago
Geez, man. Really, "Learn You" and "Brave and True"? Those books are 95% pure instruction, and you have a problem with them because they include a small captioned cartooned image every 10 pages? The tutorial in this post is on a completely different level, but if you have a problem with those other books injecting even the slightest bit of humor into an otherwise very dry material (however interesting it may be, it is dry), then I really feel angry at whoever hurt you.
- savanaly 8y ago
  See I disagreed with the poster you're responding to but now you've gone too far in the other direction. Can't people just live and let live? Some people want cartoon-style explanations and others don't, simple as that.
  - vaer-k 8y ago
    Uh, yeah, that's precisely what I said, so. Agree. What about what I said indicated to you that I think cartoons are a requirement?
Vendan 8y ago
I think your link is ideal for computer professionals, but I think `the adventures of Certificat, Browserbird, and Compugter` will probably be better for people with little to no actual technical knowledge.
tialaramex 8y ago
You are definitely an old curmudgeon, and I assume you are proud of that. Ironic thing about your link is that it's using Cloudflare ...So in an up-to-date browser it comes over TLS 1.3 (Cloudflare enables this by default, technically they're talking Draft 28, but this differs from the final RFC only in that drafts deliberately switch off TLS 1.3 downgrade protection since otherwise each draft would be mutually incompatible with every other system) ...So the description of how this works ends up being wrong for the site it's describing because it assumes TLS 1.{0,1,2} semantics but ...Despite the micro version change, TLS 1.3 is a significantly different protocol, both in how it begins and in details like resumption (now handled with PSKs) that this post describes for older SSL/TLS. It looks enough like TLS 1.2 that dumb middleboxes let it past. One seldom acknowledged reason to write this sort of explanation (as a cartoon, as blog post, as a slide deck, whatever) is that the process of explaining something to other people clarifies our own understanding. When you're rehearsing "And of course the hats are invisible to bears, because..." you pause for a second -- wait, why _are_ these hats invisible to bears? Now that you come to say it, that's incredible and you realise you don't know. You go away and read the source materials - aha! Now you know why the hats are invisible and so although the purported purpose was to teach others, what you've actually done is learn for yourself. [Edited s/hosted on/using/]
geofft 8y ago
> I may very well be an old curmudgeon but am I the only one who doesn't like all this comic-y cutesy content? They seem to be a rebranded version of the old `Idiot's guide to X` which were ubiquitous in the '90s. The For Dummies series - corny jokes, mediocre cartoons, and all - are what taught me computing as a kid growing up in the '90s. So I support content like this because, empirically, it works.
- theandrewbailey 8y ago
  I haven't looked at a For Dummies book in years (maybe since the 90s), but I remember them having far more text to visual illustration than this.
jypepin 8y ago
FWIW I read it, I enjoyed it, and now I feel I know just as much as I wanted to know about https, ssl and tsl.
mjw1007 8y ago
I don't think the industry is getting dumber. I remember learning a lot from 1980s computer books with jokes and cartoons when I was older than 10, for example http://wiki.c2.com/?ThinkingForth http://wiki.c2.com/?ThinkingForth , or the Fortran colouring book. I'm not sure I'd've got on with ones where all the text is in cartoons, though. Too hard to scan, perhaps. It was best when the cartoons were doing double service as diagrams showing what was going on inside the computer.
- some_account 8y ago
  I think they are actually. It used to require skill to be a programmer in the old days. You knew one language very well. Today you know hundreds of small things on medium level and you can Google anything. It's quite easy to write code in any text editor, they are all filled with colorful fonts, intellisense, plugins etc.
  - rainonmoon 8y ago
    This is the same spurious argument that we're getting dumber because we can Google anything we forget. Hey, we developed software to make our lives easier and make us orders of magnitude more efficient! What a bunch of idiots!
some_account 8y ago
It's good for younger audience. Myself, I just want the facts without the corny attempts at humor too.
nothrabannosir 8y ago
I hate it now, but it was the only thing I could read without getting completely overwhelmed, back in my early days. Without beej's guide to networking I wouldn’t have understood TCP.
da02 8y ago
Part of the situation might be because of outsiders who try and learn these things on their own time. You might have a molecular biologist who finds themselves needing to setup up a webapp for some research and they were never formally educated as an "engineer". Grown-ups also sometimes like to pass on what they know to children, teens and grandparent, so they might resort to cutesy stuff. Then there are dummies like me who need lots of illustrations and everything explained from 10 different points of views before they start to understand. But, most of us hate getting in the way of the masters and experts. We should have a "kids" version of HN and of various reddits. Everyone will be anonymous because your 50-yr-old co-worker doesn't want to be known around the office for reading comics that include cartoon superheroes showing you how to battle the evils of CSRF/SSRF. (Thanks for linking to that page that explains TLS. That also helps.) Any opinion of the "Head First" books? https://ssearch.oreilly.com/?q=head+first https://ssearch.oreilly.com/?q=head+first They seem better than the 90s "...For Dummies" books.
jaredklewis 8y ago
Different people learn in different ways. I usually prefer a well written, funny text to a dry one. If I am forced to use a completely dry reference to learn a new topic, I often make up humorous mnemonics and explanations as I go, to help things stick. So, yes, I (and I assume many others) benefit from the content. Of course that is not to say it is for everyone. Personally I don’t care much for learning from videos but know many people who much prefer them to text. I doubt there is a single, universal style of learning medium that is optimal for most (let alone all) learners.
- gwbas1c 8y ago
  Ruby on Rails became popular with teenagers partly because of "Why's Poignant Guide to..." (and I forget the exact name.) It was full of funny drawings, jokes, and memes. Honestly, I couldn't make it past a few panels of this comic. It's a good idea, though. I think the reason why Why's guide worked is that the content came first, and the jokes were more for comedic relief. Trying to make everything a cutesy analogy doesn't make it more accessible. Pacing is just as important.
neuronic 8y ago
> Are we as an industry getting dumber? No and apparently "we as an industry" also struggle to get less condescending. Maybe "we as an industry" don't have to learn the intricate details of such technologies in this cheerful manner. But is every potential consumer of this site really a CS-degree holding, experienced developer coming from the trenches? You know, some 13-year old might stumble upon this and find it quite a bit more engaging than the (very good) link you have shared. Not all content is for all people at all times. Thankfully, the internet is still free enough for all of us to close pages if they don't provide useful content.
LolNoGenerics 8y ago
If you need more details there are certainly better sources. But imho there is usually a huge lack of trustworthy high level overviews. Newbies make mistakes and seasoned teachers may have a hidden agenda.
nmca 8y ago
I started as a 10 year old with a "for dummies" book and finished an MEng in CS this year. So some people do benefit from it a great deal, it seems.
jiveturkey 8y ago
wow, talk about not appreciating your audience. no man or woman on the street with a job not in the information economy would care to digest even your excellent linked doc. TFA target audience is not even someone that understands that the Internet and the Web are different things. It's a wonderful doc, wonderfully presented. With every mom and pop retail business needing a website these days, this is a really great explanation for them, so they can start to understand why they want https.

coin 8y ago

Way too obnoxious with all the comic stuff, I left after 20 seconds.

stevekemp2 8y ago
There are several "celebrity" bloggers who keep this trend alive. I find it annoying too, but better that than some of the other approaches which involve constant! Exclamation!! Marks everywhere!!! A few zine-style approaches manage to capture the worst of both worlds, but I guess if others find it endearing and cute then good luck to them!!
alonmower 8y ago
I made it decently far but the 6 frames of meaningless handshake pictures finally got me to close the tab in anger

Rotdhizon 8y ago

I think it has to do with who is reading. Some people learn better this way (myself included). I've seen many topics over the years explained in forms similar to this and it was very easy to understand opposed to just reading it out of a textbook. Although I'll admit that even this was done way too cutesy. They put far too many pictures with too small of text on each page, made it hard to follow along and keep focused. I need to be able to read fluently, small white text on a black background is hard on the eyes. You can find little snippets like this in many textbooks, but it's generally a single picture or two that are shown to better show the point made in the preceding text.

0x8BADF00D 8y ago

Dunno about the industry getting dumber, but they certainly are getting lazier when it comes to UX. I could barely read it for 10s before my eyes started hurting.

vagab0nd 8y ago
Same here. I don't necessarily hate the comic style. But for some reason this particular style makes it very hard to read and understand.

Nicksil 8y ago

I share a similar sentiment. Articles with an abundance of memes/gifs -- ones trying to be funny/cute, not contributing to the subject matter -- are placed in the same category. At best it adds clutter, but usually lends to distraction and/or frustration and moving on.

hannasanarion 8y ago

How dare educators attempt to entertain? Technology isn't only for the wealthy elite who have the time to sit and read hundreds of pages of jargon anymore. The internet is for everyone, not just us nerds.

dooglius 8y ago
On the contrary, this phenomenon seems pretty isolated to nerds/tech-interested-people. Are there any areas outside of technology where you have seen something presented in a similarly childish way?
- chc 8y ago
  The reason these exist is because these topics are big and somewhat inaccessible, but they are relevant to people who wouldn't learn them in the normal course of their lives. You wouldn't expect to see as many for something that is commonly known in a given field and doesn't matter to people outside it, or things which are already quite accessible without trying to make them super-friendly. Here's an example that does something similar with the law: http://lawcomic.net/ http://lawcomic.net/ You'll notice that the law has the same characteristics I identified earlier in technology — it's very relevant to ordinary people, but it's large and inaccessible enough that most people don't really understand it and setting a law book in front of them wouldn't help.
geezerjay 8y ago
> How dare educators attempt to entertain? The content is harder to read and to follow, and concepts aren't as accessible. Even if it's an attempt at entertaining, this project falls very short of serving any educational purpose.
- vaer-k 8y ago
  I really hate when people pretend their opinion is fact
  - 8y ago

dooglius 8y ago

I feel the same way. Another thing I've noticed along the same lines is companies and technologies named after words in "toddler speak" by adding -y or -ly to the end of a word (e.g. dog -> doggy). I initially chalked this up to the .ly TLD but that doesn't seem to be widely used nowadays. Maybe it started out that way and took on a life of its own?

thaumasiotes 8y ago
> named after words in "toddler speak" by adding -y or -ly to the end of a word (e.g. dog -> doggy) Can you provide some examples of "toddler speak" involving the -ly suffix? I don't mean company or technology names -- words like "doggy", but using a -ly suffix.
- shard 8y ago
  How about googly eyes?
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    The two theories I see for the etymology of "googly eyes" are (1) that the term descends from goggle + -y ( https://www.etymonline.com/word/googly https://www.etymonline.com/word/googly ); or (2) that the term is related to a comic strip character named Barney Google ( https://blog.retroplanet.com/googly-eyes/ https://blog.retroplanet.com/googly-eyes/ ). Neither theory involves a -ly suffix. They don't really involve the diminutive -y suffix either; that looks more like the adjective-forming -y suffix.

blowski 8y ago

For every old curmudgeon who hates this style, there's probably a young whippersnapper who loves it. No reason we can't have both.

umanwizard 8y ago
I don't think it's about age, as I remember hating this style when I started getting into programming around 15.
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  I, too, was an old curmudgeon at 15. It's only been these last few years I've truly grown into it though.
crispyambulance 8y ago
Yes. Different strokes for different folks. Some people like the comics, some people like the naked horrific rfc docs (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2818 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2818) complete with the phony typewriter linebreaks. Many prefer something in between. Something for everybody.

Reedx 8y ago

> can we just read something like https://hpbn.co/transport-layer-security-tls/ https://hpbn.co/transport-layer-security-tls/ ? Yep, we have that option and lots of explanations like that already exist. This is a different approach to explaining the subject. I don't see how that's a problem. Personally I think they just went overboard with it (to the point of being distracting), but I get what they're trying to do and appreciate the effort - even if it's not for me. Kudos I say. Others might find it useful. Plus it could inspire someone else to explore another approach.

anafh83 8y ago
You are right. I'll be using this comic if I need to teach a 10 year old what https is.
scrollaway 8y ago
I mean, the OP's comic is just... really, really hard to read. It's not a medium problem, it's a layout/font/design problem. I think GP is just hating on the wrong thing. Comics are fine, and having that as well as the technical explanations, is fine. I agree with a commenter further down wrt. the immensely popular "For Dummies" series which manages to make various complex subjects more accessible. I also think this type of webcomic can be really well done. Chrome's webcomic springs to mind: https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/big_00.html https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/big_00.html
- Reedx 8y ago
  Spot on. A few UX and editing passes would make a world of difference.

vaer-k 8y ago

Geez, man. Really, "Learn You" and "Brave and True"? Those books are 95% pure instruction, and you have a problem with them because they include a small captioned cartooned image every 10 pages? The tutorial in this post is on a completely different level, but if you have a problem with those other books injecting even the slightest bit of humor into an otherwise very dry material (however interesting it may be, it is dry), then I really feel angry at whoever hurt you.

savanaly 8y ago
See I disagreed with the poster you're responding to but now you've gone too far in the other direction. Can't people just live and let live? Some people want cartoon-style explanations and others don't, simple as that.
- vaer-k 8y ago
  Uh, yeah, that's precisely what I said, so. Agree. What about what I said indicated to you that I think cartoons are a requirement?

Vendan 8y ago

I think your link is ideal for computer professionals, but I think `the adventures of Certificat, Browserbird, and Compugter` will probably be better for people with little to no actual technical knowledge.

tialaramex 8y ago

You are definitely an old curmudgeon, and I assume you are proud of that. Ironic thing about your link is that it's using Cloudflare ...So in an up-to-date browser it comes over TLS 1.3 (Cloudflare enables this by default, technically they're talking Draft 28, but this differs from the final RFC only in that drafts deliberately switch off TLS 1.3 downgrade protection since otherwise each draft would be mutually incompatible with every other system) ...So the description of how this works ends up being wrong for the site it's describing because it assumes TLS 1.{0,1,2} semantics but ...Despite the micro version change, TLS 1.3 is a significantly different protocol, both in how it begins and in details like resumption (now handled with PSKs) that this post describes for older SSL/TLS. It looks enough like TLS 1.2 that dumb middleboxes let it past. One seldom acknowledged reason to write this sort of explanation (as a cartoon, as blog post, as a slide deck, whatever) is that the process of explaining something to other people clarifies our own understanding. When you're rehearsing "And of course the hats are invisible to bears, because..." you pause for a second -- wait, why _are_ these hats invisible to bears? Now that you come to say it, that's incredible and you realise you don't know. You go away and read the source materials - aha! Now you know why the hats are invisible and so although the purported purpose was to teach others, what you've actually done is learn for yourself. [Edited s/hosted on/using/]

geofft 8y ago

> I may very well be an old curmudgeon but am I the only one who doesn't like all this comic-y cutesy content? They seem to be a rebranded version of the old `Idiot's guide to X` which were ubiquitous in the '90s. The For Dummies series - corny jokes, mediocre cartoons, and all - are what taught me computing as a kid growing up in the '90s. So I support content like this because, empirically, it works.

theandrewbailey 8y ago
I haven't looked at a For Dummies book in years (maybe since the 90s), but I remember them having far more text to visual illustration than this.

jypepin 8y ago

FWIW I read it, I enjoyed it, and now I feel I know just as much as I wanted to know about https, ssl and tsl.

mjw1007 8y ago

I don't think the industry is getting dumber. I remember learning a lot from 1980s computer books with jokes and cartoons when I was older than 10, for example http://wiki.c2.com/?ThinkingForth http://wiki.c2.com/?ThinkingForth , or the Fortran colouring book. I'm not sure I'd've got on with ones where all the text is in cartoons, though. Too hard to scan, perhaps. It was best when the cartoons were doing double service as diagrams showing what was going on inside the computer.

some_account 8y ago
I think they are actually. It used to require skill to be a programmer in the old days. You knew one language very well. Today you know hundreds of small things on medium level and you can Google anything. It's quite easy to write code in any text editor, they are all filled with colorful fonts, intellisense, plugins etc.
- rainonmoon 8y ago
  This is the same spurious argument that we're getting dumber because we can Google anything we forget. Hey, we developed software to make our lives easier and make us orders of magnitude more efficient! What a bunch of idiots!

some_account 8y ago

It's good for younger audience. Myself, I just want the facts without the corny attempts at humor too.

nothrabannosir 8y ago

I hate it now, but it was the only thing I could read without getting completely overwhelmed, back in my early days. Without beej's guide to networking I wouldn’t have understood TCP.

da02 8y ago

Part of the situation might be because of outsiders who try and learn these things on their own time. You might have a molecular biologist who finds themselves needing to setup up a webapp for some research and they were never formally educated as an "engineer". Grown-ups also sometimes like to pass on what they know to children, teens and grandparent, so they might resort to cutesy stuff. Then there are dummies like me who need lots of illustrations and everything explained from 10 different points of views before they start to understand. But, most of us hate getting in the way of the masters and experts. We should have a "kids" version of HN and of various reddits. Everyone will be anonymous because your 50-yr-old co-worker doesn't want to be known around the office for reading comics that include cartoon superheroes showing you how to battle the evils of CSRF/SSRF. (Thanks for linking to that page that explains TLS. That also helps.) Any opinion of the "Head First" books? https://ssearch.oreilly.com/?q=head+first https://ssearch.oreilly.com/?q=head+first They seem better than the 90s "...For Dummies" books.

jaredklewis 8y ago

Different people learn in different ways. I usually prefer a well written, funny text to a dry one. If I am forced to use a completely dry reference to learn a new topic, I often make up humorous mnemonics and explanations as I go, to help things stick. So, yes, I (and I assume many others) benefit from the content. Of course that is not to say it is for everyone. Personally I don’t care much for learning from videos but know many people who much prefer them to text. I doubt there is a single, universal style of learning medium that is optimal for most (let alone all) learners.

gwbas1c 8y ago
Ruby on Rails became popular with teenagers partly because of "Why's Poignant Guide to..." (and I forget the exact name.) It was full of funny drawings, jokes, and memes. Honestly, I couldn't make it past a few panels of this comic. It's a good idea, though. I think the reason why Why's guide worked is that the content came first, and the jokes were more for comedic relief. Trying to make everything a cutesy analogy doesn't make it more accessible. Pacing is just as important.

neuronic 8y ago

> Are we as an industry getting dumber? No and apparently "we as an industry" also struggle to get less condescending. Maybe "we as an industry" don't have to learn the intricate details of such technologies in this cheerful manner. But is every potential consumer of this site really a CS-degree holding, experienced developer coming from the trenches? You know, some 13-year old might stumble upon this and find it quite a bit more engaging than the (very good) link you have shared. Not all content is for all people at all times. Thankfully, the internet is still free enough for all of us to close pages if they don't provide useful content.

LolNoGenerics 8y ago

If you need more details there are certainly better sources. But imho there is usually a huge lack of trustworthy high level overviews. Newbies make mistakes and seasoned teachers may have a hidden agenda.

nmca 8y ago

I started as a 10 year old with a "for dummies" book and finished an MEng in CS this year. So some people do benefit from it a great deal, it seems.

jiveturkey 8y ago

wow, talk about not appreciating your audience. no man or woman on the street with a job not in the information economy would care to digest even your excellent linked doc. TFA target audience is not even someone that understands that the Internet and the Web are different things. It's a wonderful doc, wonderfully presented. With every mom and pop retail business needing a website these days, this is a really great explanation for them, so they can start to understand why they want https.