4 ms·
Am I the only one who feels this is blatant and tasteless self promotion?
by hcho 16y ago
Am I the only one who feels this is blatant and tasteless self promotion?
- nollidge 16y agoI think it's absolutely, blatantly self-promoting, but I don't see how it's tasteless.
- NickPollard 16y agoIt's certainly self promotion, and fairly blatant I suppose, but what about it strikes you as tasteless? I think his central point - writing more helps you write better; StackOverflow is an easy and welcoming place to write more - is largely true, and I don't think he should be unable to say it just because it happens to promote his own interests.
- hcho 16y agoHis writing about truisms and plugging StackOverflow started to become too frequent for me. I can't help feeling that such posts are only written for their advertisement value. I expect some sincerity from blog posts.
- recoiledsnake 16y agoWell, the informative thing for me was that one of his original goals in starting StackOverflow was to improve the writing skills of programmers and not just(like everyone would assume) to create a programmer question/answer forum.
- tygorius 16y agoYeah, I agree that the overall utility and technical meat of his posts has dropped off in the last couple of years. (Critics will likely jump in with "What technical meat?") I don't think that's an issue with this particular post, however. I'm not sure why you doubt his sincerity. Stack Overflow is where he's spending most of his time these days, isn't it? Why wouldn't he be mentioning it in most of his posts? It seemed appropriate for this post. What would constitute a sincere blog post?
- raganwald 16y agoBlatant self-promotion? Yes, but that's not particularly interesting on the web, it's a form of Ad Hominem ("He would say that, because he runs SO"). Here's a variation of the same criticism: Jeff Atwood says that being a great programmer is not about having technical skill, it's about communicating well. This is clearly an observation born out of narcissistic bias, since he freely admits that he is not a great programmer, and he is much more famous for writing words than code.
- tygorius 16y agoBlatant? Sure. But hardly out of the ordinary when it comes to blogs. I don't think it's tasteless, but de gustibus non disputandum est, which Phillip K. Dick so eloquently translated as "Those people can have bad taste and I don't care."