4 ms·

About 5 years ago I attended a local code meetup and someone gave a presentation about this new TypeScript thing. He basically just explained the basic syntax,

About 5 years ago I attended a local code meetup and someone gave a presentation about this new TypeScript thing. He basically just explained the basic syntax, concepts. etc. A bit boring, but not the worst I've seen. Then in the Q&A someone asked a "In our experience, we've had problems with X, what's your take?" (I've forgotten what X was specifically), and the guy replied with "well, actually, we haven't really used it yet, we're just looking at it". So ... he basically just read the TypeScript "getting started" tutorial, transformed it to a presentation, and had no real knowledge of TypeScript. The entire talk seemed pretty useless to me. I don't even know how accurate that presentation was, because there's much more to using a language effectively than the basic syntax learned from a glance at a tutorial page.

jcims 6y ago
I can barely speak in front of a crowd on something I’ve got 20 years experience in.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  This is still something I really can't wrap my mind around. What is the key difference in early life between people who will speak authoritatively regardless of competence, across the spectrum to experts who can't or won't? I don't think Dunning-Kruger explains it because it's not like every shy expert used to be a gregarious beginner.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    I have seen lots of talks by experts about the technology they're experts in, but I have seen lots of the other kind as well. I think Dunning-Kruger is part of it, but also excitement. If you are the expert you probably got that way by putting in a lot of time, you are at any rate older than when you started out and you may be in fact be quite older than the average developer, often older people do not have the same enthusiasm and excitement for things (although sure there are many that do) so that cuts down the number of people who have experience who also have enthusiasm for getting up and talking. Getting up and Talking means doing work for it, if you have kids you may not want to do that work unless your job is one where you have to do it. So if you are an older expert with kids but not employed in an evangelist role you probably are not going to go out and do talks. The expert in a subject may see so deeply into the subject that it is difficult for them to express the gee-whiz aspects that will attract other people. Those who know more are not necessarily able to express that knowledge in an interesting way. The expert may have lost interest in the matter as they gain in expertise, or they may think things that others will find amazing and interesting to be so obvious and trivial as to not be worth expressing. For these reasons it may be that talks on a subject are preponderantly given by those with less than expert mastery of the subject.
  - watwut 6y ago
    I think there is some personality difference, but also one of values. Do you think or feel it is shameful for you to give introductory talk? Did you grew up in environment where such thing was mocked or did you grew up somewhere it was praised? Do you think it matters super much if someone in audiemce looks down on you or are you rather motivated by single person that likes you? Do you think you need to be super awesome experienced speaker to make first public talk? Are you ok having public talk with primary purpose being to learn doing public talks? These imo make the difference. It is not like there would be lines of experts wanting to talk.
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    It’s called being shameless. I hate to be that one sentence reply, but why beat around the bush here?
cmdshiftf4 6y ago
>The entire talk seemed pretty useless to me. To you. On the flip side, it provided an introductory level overview of a concept many watching/attending may not have looked into themselves, or were thinking of looking into. It also provided a different form of introduction, which could be valuable for attendees with a learning style preference different to that of look-at-a-how-to or check-out-the-docs. >the guy replied with "well, actually, we haven't really used it yet, we're just looking at it". Hey, at least he was honest and didn't try to bluff his way through an answer, as many in our industry will. Overall, depending on the audience and context, it sounds like it may have been worthwhile for many attendees. Plus he got to work on his soft skills, and doing so with such vulnerability could inspire others to also.
- Carpetsmoker 6y ago
  I attended exactly because of those reasons. The problem is mostly that actually explaining a language (even from a high-level overview) well is a bit more involved than just explaining the syntax and the like. For example I currently mostly work with Go, and if I would give a high-level presentation about Go I'd start with the "tour of Go" tutorial, but I'd also add some context to some things, explain where you need to be careful to avoid problems, and emphasize the usefulness of other things that may not be obvious at a glance. That kind of stuff. I think the presentation format is a great way for doing that. A beginning JavaScript programmer might explain the "with" keyword, which would be a mistake. I have no idea if the presentation contained any mistakes like that. I don't work much with JS, and I haven't looked much as TypeScript since, but I didn't really learn all that much more than what I already knew: "TypeScript is JavaScript with optional typing". Was it useful for others? Maybe; I hope so. But for me personally I consider it a wasted hour in my life.
  - cmdshiftf4 6y ago
    >Was it useful for others? Maybe; I hope so. But for me personally I consider it a wasted hour in my life. Is this not true of most tech meetups / tech conferences though? I feel like they all carry an implicit YMMV with them, which attendees know when deciding to join.
- 6y ago
mrisoli 6y ago
This seems very common in JS land, I once saw a talk in a conf which seemed very basic, later on I stumbled onto a tweet about how the speaker often submits abstracts to CFPs often not knowing much(or at all) about the subject, which serves as motivation to learn and talk about it, works well after having a track record of speaking at events some conferences you can get invited or not have to prove yourself so much to get accepted to speak. Then I was looking at other conferences lineups and saw many repeat speakers from that same conf, often with the same talk, turned me off quite a bit from going to any more conferences, lots of the same, basic content, with not much expertise behind it.
- Carpetsmoker 6y ago
  In general I find presentations at conferences not all that interesting; I've been to conferences where I've not attended a single presentation. There are some good talks, but they're not common. Giving a good presentation requires a few different skill and some practice – I'm not good at it either. The value is mostly in hanging out with various people. The best experience has generally been when I went alone and met loads of new people, instead of going with coworkers or friends and then just hang out with them. Not that's not fun either, but I can do that next weekend anyway.
  - maps7 6y ago
    How did you meet people if you didn't go to the talks?
    - yawaramin 6y ago
      You meet them in the hallways outside the talks.
      - Carpetsmoker 6y ago
        Yeah, pretty much. At this one particular conference there were actually loads of stands in the hallway and I would hang out and chat with various people there. The more professionally organised ones don't tend to have that many stands, except for paying sponsors. I understand why they do that, but I think there's good value in "community stands" too. I mean, the talks themselves are just "shut up and listen", right? Not too much socializing happening there. I think that revolving the entire conference around presentations is probably not always the best format.
maps7 6y ago
I know someone who does this and people lap it up. I've heard other people refer to his expertise too many times for my liking.
xellisx 6y ago
If I can find the content online and not have to deal being around of bunch of people, I'll just save my money.
runawaybottle 6y ago
The bigger question would be why didn’t that person feel any shame in giving that presentation?

jcims 6y ago

I can barely speak in front of a crowd on something I’ve got 20 years experience in.

nitrogen 6y ago
This is still something I really can't wrap my mind around. What is the key difference in early life between people who will speak authoritatively regardless of competence, across the spectrum to experts who can't or won't? I don't think Dunning-Kruger explains it because it's not like every shy expert used to be a gregarious beginner.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  I have seen lots of talks by experts about the technology they're experts in, but I have seen lots of the other kind as well. I think Dunning-Kruger is part of it, but also excitement. If you are the expert you probably got that way by putting in a lot of time, you are at any rate older than when you started out and you may be in fact be quite older than the average developer, often older people do not have the same enthusiasm and excitement for things (although sure there are many that do) so that cuts down the number of people who have experience who also have enthusiasm for getting up and talking. Getting up and Talking means doing work for it, if you have kids you may not want to do that work unless your job is one where you have to do it. So if you are an older expert with kids but not employed in an evangelist role you probably are not going to go out and do talks. The expert in a subject may see so deeply into the subject that it is difficult for them to express the gee-whiz aspects that will attract other people. Those who know more are not necessarily able to express that knowledge in an interesting way. The expert may have lost interest in the matter as they gain in expertise, or they may think things that others will find amazing and interesting to be so obvious and trivial as to not be worth expressing. For these reasons it may be that talks on a subject are preponderantly given by those with less than expert mastery of the subject.
- watwut 6y ago
  I think there is some personality difference, but also one of values. Do you think or feel it is shameful for you to give introductory talk? Did you grew up in environment where such thing was mocked or did you grew up somewhere it was praised? Do you think it matters super much if someone in audiemce looks down on you or are you rather motivated by single person that likes you? Do you think you need to be super awesome experienced speaker to make first public talk? Are you ok having public talk with primary purpose being to learn doing public talks? These imo make the difference. It is not like there would be lines of experts wanting to talk.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  It’s called being shameless. I hate to be that one sentence reply, but why beat around the bush here?

cmdshiftf4 6y ago

>The entire talk seemed pretty useless to me. To you. On the flip side, it provided an introductory level overview of a concept many watching/attending may not have looked into themselves, or were thinking of looking into. It also provided a different form of introduction, which could be valuable for attendees with a learning style preference different to that of look-at-a-how-to or check-out-the-docs. >the guy replied with "well, actually, we haven't really used it yet, we're just looking at it". Hey, at least he was honest and didn't try to bluff his way through an answer, as many in our industry will. Overall, depending on the audience and context, it sounds like it may have been worthwhile for many attendees. Plus he got to work on his soft skills, and doing so with such vulnerability could inspire others to also.

Carpetsmoker 6y ago
I attended exactly because of those reasons. The problem is mostly that actually explaining a language (even from a high-level overview) well is a bit more involved than just explaining the syntax and the like. For example I currently mostly work with Go, and if I would give a high-level presentation about Go I'd start with the "tour of Go" tutorial, but I'd also add some context to some things, explain where you need to be careful to avoid problems, and emphasize the usefulness of other things that may not be obvious at a glance. That kind of stuff. I think the presentation format is a great way for doing that. A beginning JavaScript programmer might explain the "with" keyword, which would be a mistake. I have no idea if the presentation contained any mistakes like that. I don't work much with JS, and I haven't looked much as TypeScript since, but I didn't really learn all that much more than what I already knew: "TypeScript is JavaScript with optional typing". Was it useful for others? Maybe; I hope so. But for me personally I consider it a wasted hour in my life.
- cmdshiftf4 6y ago
  >Was it useful for others? Maybe; I hope so. But for me personally I consider it a wasted hour in my life. Is this not true of most tech meetups / tech conferences though? I feel like they all carry an implicit YMMV with them, which attendees know when deciding to join.
6y ago

mrisoli 6y ago

This seems very common in JS land, I once saw a talk in a conf which seemed very basic, later on I stumbled onto a tweet about how the speaker often submits abstracts to CFPs often not knowing much(or at all) about the subject, which serves as motivation to learn and talk about it, works well after having a track record of speaking at events some conferences you can get invited or not have to prove yourself so much to get accepted to speak. Then I was looking at other conferences lineups and saw many repeat speakers from that same conf, often with the same talk, turned me off quite a bit from going to any more conferences, lots of the same, basic content, with not much expertise behind it.

Carpetsmoker 6y ago
In general I find presentations at conferences not all that interesting; I've been to conferences where I've not attended a single presentation. There are some good talks, but they're not common. Giving a good presentation requires a few different skill and some practice – I'm not good at it either. The value is mostly in hanging out with various people. The best experience has generally been when I went alone and met loads of new people, instead of going with coworkers or friends and then just hang out with them. Not that's not fun either, but I can do that next weekend anyway.
- maps7 6y ago
  How did you meet people if you didn't go to the talks?
  - yawaramin 6y ago
    You meet them in the hallways outside the talks.
    - Carpetsmoker 6y ago
      Yeah, pretty much. At this one particular conference there were actually loads of stands in the hallway and I would hang out and chat with various people there. The more professionally organised ones don't tend to have that many stands, except for paying sponsors. I understand why they do that, but I think there's good value in "community stands" too. I mean, the talks themselves are just "shut up and listen", right? Not too much socializing happening there. I think that revolving the entire conference around presentations is probably not always the best format.

maps7 6y ago

I know someone who does this and people lap it up. I've heard other people refer to his expertise too many times for my liking.

xellisx 6y ago

If I can find the content online and not have to deal being around of bunch of people, I'll just save my money.

runawaybottle 6y ago

The bigger question would be why didn’t that person feel any shame in giving that presentation?