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> Did you assume that, and avoid clicking the link? It doesn’t suggest a universal rule for productivity, and even starts by predicting your reaction: “It’s not

> Did you assume that, and avoid clicking the link? It doesn’t suggest a universal rule for productivity, and even starts by predicting your reaction: “It’s not a clickbait title, but I understand why it looks that way.” No, I read it, and regretted reading it, and figured I should save others the trouble. I specifically called it out as baity because it claims not to be, which is ludicrous, because it's a meandering piece that isn't really saying much ("try boneheaded solutions") of anything, seems like a mix of generalities, caveats, and self-promotion. I'd challenge you to ask yourself this -- Is there even the slightest chance that anybody who reads this article is going to become 10x as productive from this "technique"? If not, then that seems the definition of linkbait.

dahart 6y ago
Fair enough, I hear your points, but FWIW I think you’re still being a little unfair. Clickbait is defined as being misleading. This article, being a blog post, could be accurately described as light on content, and not very deep. But I don’t see it as misleading or serving any agenda besides what it said. It doesn’t fit the definition of linkbait at all in my book. I don’t know whether it would convince someone, especially someone who’s in a pessimistic frame of mind, to be more productive. But I will say this: after a couple of decades of professional programming experience, the number of times I’ve seen extremely “productive” people who think they’re clever over-engineer the shit out of something that ends up wasting a ton of money and time for entire teams, I can’t even count. It’s a very good point to stop and evaluate whether there are ‘boneheaded’ solutions you’ve overlooked, rather than try to hero-code something complicated. I also think it’s very true that mentoring others and helping the team is how you achieve this symbolic notion of ‘10x’, and this point does get overlooked sometimes in other discussions and blog posts on code productivity. There is, of course, no objective metric here at all, and the number 10 is being used metaphorically, mostly because it’s basically a meme at this point, which is obviously why it was used in the title, so I think it’s reasonable to avoid taking it literally and using it as the criteria for whether the writing is valid. Anyway, cheers, I hope you find some articles here that reach you in a positive way.

dahart 6y ago

Fair enough, I hear your points, but FWIW I think you’re still being a little unfair. Clickbait is defined as being misleading. This article, being a blog post, could be accurately described as light on content, and not very deep. But I don’t see it as misleading or serving any agenda besides what it said. It doesn’t fit the definition of linkbait at all in my book. I don’t know whether it would convince someone, especially someone who’s in a pessimistic frame of mind, to be more productive. But I will say this: after a couple of decades of professional programming experience, the number of times I’ve seen extremely “productive” people who think they’re clever over-engineer the shit out of something that ends up wasting a ton of money and time for entire teams, I can’t even count. It’s a very good point to stop and evaluate whether there are ‘boneheaded’ solutions you’ve overlooked, rather than try to hero-code something complicated. I also think it’s very true that mentoring others and helping the team is how you achieve this symbolic notion of ‘10x’, and this point does get overlooked sometimes in other discussions and blog posts on code productivity. There is, of course, no objective metric here at all, and the number 10 is being used metaphorically, mostly because it’s basically a meme at this point, which is obviously why it was used in the title, so I think it’s reasonable to avoid taking it literally and using it as the criteria for whether the writing is valid. Anyway, cheers, I hope you find some articles here that reach you in a positive way.