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>> The people actually doing the work don’t have time to talk about it and the people spending all their time talking about it aren’t doing the work. I can't r

>> The people actually doing the work don’t have time to talk about it and the people spending all their time talking about it aren’t doing the work. I can't really agree with this. I think it's worth noting that writing about something you have just learned is a really good way to solidify that knowledge, especially if you are able to get feedback from others. So a lot of people deliberately set aside the time to do it, even if it comes at the expense of greater levels of productivity.

fxtentacle 6y ago
I wouldn't want to read a tutorial by someone who has just learned it. I want a tutorial by someone who has ample experience. How would you feel if I write a cookbook the first time my bread rolls didn't catch fire? ... to solicit feedback?
- enraged_camel 6y ago
  It totally depends on the tutorial and the way it is written. I have personally learned a lot from "hey everyone, I just learned this neat thing and wanted to share!" type articles on the Internet, where the author discloses their level of experience upfront so you can have the appropriate expectations.
  - fxtentacle 6y ago
    Sure, I also like those inspirational hints. But the category of articles that I was criticizing here is when unemployed students pretend to be the authority on topic X to improve their chances of getting hired. Those articles typically do not disclose the lack of experience of the other. Quite the contrary, some of them even make up achievements and/or credentials.
- blueridge 6y ago
  Somewhat related: I think this depends on what you're learning and how you've learned how to learn. As a beginner, I don't have any business going right to the master to ask about how I can improve my skills, so that I can "level up" and get the best results right away. Then again, we Western folk like pills and magic solutions for everything. We want results now, now, now. If you're a white belt, go chat with a yellow or orange belt. If you're a blue belt, go chat with the purple belt. You don't walk up to a black belt and ask about the best way to tie your belt. No, you go ask the other white belts who have been at it for a little longer than you have, the people who have a couple of stripes on their belt. These people are closer to where you are in the given moment. They were in your shoes not too long ago, so they can help translate your mistakes, and help make sense of what you're thinking, asking, or learning. When you see a really great photograph that touches you in ways you cannot describe, you're not seeing the product of an expensive camera, or a filter, you're seeing the result of someone who has taken hundreds of thousands of really shitty photographs over the course of their lifetime. You're seeing the results of maybe decades of practice. If this person writes a tutorial about taking photographs, can you learn from it? Sure. But they're not going to make you a better photographer by osmosis, you've got to go take a lot of pictures and read the beginners tutorials along the way. So yeah, if I've been burning my bread rolls for months, I'd love to know that one thing you did to not set the house on fire every time you put rolls in the oven.
  - fxtentacle 6y ago
    I believe there is a categorical difference between skills operating on a continuum and those operating in a binary fashion. Pretty much all motor skills like like Karate can be performed okay, good, better, really good, etc. Similarly, I can take gradual baby steps from being a bad photographer towards becoming okay and then good. But for most programming things, it either works correctly, or it doesn't. There's very little middle ground in an algorithm. Either it works to solve your problem, or it doesn't. Accordingly, I don't believe I can learn much from someone else's broken example in the way that I could learn from a (mediocre but slightly better than me) photographer.
    - watwut 6y ago
      This is not true. The code can be flawless, slightly buggy, maintennable with some effort, hardly maintennable or unfixable. And then there are personal preferences and opinions about what is good code. The algorithm can be slow, slightly faster, fast. The intro into framework can be in the middle too.
      - zamubafoo 6y ago
        But within context of a tutorial, anything less than flawless is not worthy of inclusion (making it binary in this case). IMO, any content aimed for beginners should be flawless. Beyond introductory material, it's a trade off of complexity and time as it's hard to compress the factors needed to demonstrate anything technical.
- Carpetsmoker 6y ago
  It depends on what the thing is you've just learned and your background. For example, this week I worked a bit on an article on the working with the Go "analysis" package for running and writing your own static analysis tools (not yet finished). I "just learned" this 2 weeks ago and wrote a few things in it. I think it's useful to share my experience on this: there isn't a whole lot of content on it and I think people could benefit from it. It's also helpful for myself, because writing it down clearly means I understand it better too now. My background here is that I've been programming in Go for over 4 years and have worked with the Go ast package before (though not the analysis framework). I'm hardly a renowned expert on it, but I'd like to think that I have enough background/experience to know what I'm doing and communicate that information others.

fxtentacle 6y ago

I wouldn't want to read a tutorial by someone who has just learned it. I want a tutorial by someone who has ample experience. How would you feel if I write a cookbook the first time my bread rolls didn't catch fire? ... to solicit feedback?

enraged_camel 6y ago
It totally depends on the tutorial and the way it is written. I have personally learned a lot from "hey everyone, I just learned this neat thing and wanted to share!" type articles on the Internet, where the author discloses their level of experience upfront so you can have the appropriate expectations.
- fxtentacle 6y ago
  Sure, I also like those inspirational hints. But the category of articles that I was criticizing here is when unemployed students pretend to be the authority on topic X to improve their chances of getting hired. Those articles typically do not disclose the lack of experience of the other. Quite the contrary, some of them even make up achievements and/or credentials.
blueridge 6y ago
Somewhat related: I think this depends on what you're learning and how you've learned how to learn. As a beginner, I don't have any business going right to the master to ask about how I can improve my skills, so that I can "level up" and get the best results right away. Then again, we Western folk like pills and magic solutions for everything. We want results now, now, now. If you're a white belt, go chat with a yellow or orange belt. If you're a blue belt, go chat with the purple belt. You don't walk up to a black belt and ask about the best way to tie your belt. No, you go ask the other white belts who have been at it for a little longer than you have, the people who have a couple of stripes on their belt. These people are closer to where you are in the given moment. They were in your shoes not too long ago, so they can help translate your mistakes, and help make sense of what you're thinking, asking, or learning. When you see a really great photograph that touches you in ways you cannot describe, you're not seeing the product of an expensive camera, or a filter, you're seeing the result of someone who has taken hundreds of thousands of really shitty photographs over the course of their lifetime. You're seeing the results of maybe decades of practice. If this person writes a tutorial about taking photographs, can you learn from it? Sure. But they're not going to make you a better photographer by osmosis, you've got to go take a lot of pictures and read the beginners tutorials along the way. So yeah, if I've been burning my bread rolls for months, I'd love to know that one thing you did to not set the house on fire every time you put rolls in the oven.
- fxtentacle 6y ago
  I believe there is a categorical difference between skills operating on a continuum and those operating in a binary fashion. Pretty much all motor skills like like Karate can be performed okay, good, better, really good, etc. Similarly, I can take gradual baby steps from being a bad photographer towards becoming okay and then good. But for most programming things, it either works correctly, or it doesn't. There's very little middle ground in an algorithm. Either it works to solve your problem, or it doesn't. Accordingly, I don't believe I can learn much from someone else's broken example in the way that I could learn from a (mediocre but slightly better than me) photographer.
  - watwut 6y ago
    This is not true. The code can be flawless, slightly buggy, maintennable with some effort, hardly maintennable or unfixable. And then there are personal preferences and opinions about what is good code. The algorithm can be slow, slightly faster, fast. The intro into framework can be in the middle too.
    - zamubafoo 6y ago
      But within context of a tutorial, anything less than flawless is not worthy of inclusion (making it binary in this case). IMO, any content aimed for beginners should be flawless. Beyond introductory material, it's a trade off of complexity and time as it's hard to compress the factors needed to demonstrate anything technical.
Carpetsmoker 6y ago
It depends on what the thing is you've just learned and your background. For example, this week I worked a bit on an article on the working with the Go "analysis" package for running and writing your own static analysis tools (not yet finished). I "just learned" this 2 weeks ago and wrote a few things in it. I think it's useful to share my experience on this: there isn't a whole lot of content on it and I think people could benefit from it. It's also helpful for myself, because writing it down clearly means I understand it better too now. My background here is that I've been programming in Go for over 4 years and have worked with the Go ast package before (though not the analysis framework). I'm hardly a renowned expert on it, but I'd like to think that I have enough background/experience to know what I'm doing and communicate that information others.