5 ms·

If you'd look closely these resources are grouped around a single topic, and carefully selected by an expert in a highly specialized field. It saves me, persona

by helwr 15y ago

If you'd look closely these resources are grouped around a single topic, and carefully selected by an expert in a highly specialized field. It saves me, personally, a ton of time reading marginal papers and browsing through a clusterfuck of references.

crasshopper 15y ago
I did look closely at this list. I commented because it's such a typical example of unearned upvote candy. I could have assembled this list (as a non-computer scientist) in less than an hour just by looking at the usual places I look for lecture notes and following the typical linkbait-maker advice of leaving a brief comment and headings. The author admits s/he is still working through the material and the details on each are minimal, so this curator ≠ expert. Nor is the field "highly specialized". arxiv/math.QA is specialised. Welding less-than-1cm aluminium for a particular part in powerboat engines is highly specialised. Computer Science Major is an extremely broad area of study. To me this is exactly a "clusterf_ck of references".
- helwr 15y ago
  Ok, I should have renamed it from the original title given by the author to "Excellent List of Distributed Systems and Relevant CS Courses With Good Lecture Notes, Assembled by a University of Cambridge PhD in Mobile Distributed Systems, Zookeeper Committer and a Glorious Systems Engineer Who Lives and Breathes Distributed Systems at Cloudera" to get less upvotes. Just read the rest of his blog. This is not a trivial list of references that you can compile by googling without thorough understanding of the subject matter, trust me, I've been digging this field for too long [1] Alternatively you can ask hundreds of people who re-tweeted this link[2], bookmarked it on their Delicious [3], or those who study it now, why did they think it was good. Look at their profiles, what percentage of them are dumb link-followers? Or simply try to compile and post a list of courses with the same title and see how many upvotes/retweets/bookmarks it gets and how quickly it disappears from the front page if it gets there in the first place. HN users are largely linkbait-averse, that's what I like about this community. [1] http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-good-resources-for-learning-about-distributed-computing http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-good-resources-for-learni... [2] http://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/%22advanced%20computer%20science%20courses%22 http://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/%22advanced%20computer... [3] http://www.delicious.com/url/6c0121386126295cd80dc3da665267ba http://www.delicious.com/url/6c0121386126295cd80dc3da665267b...
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - crasshopper 15y ago
    helwr, I respect the fact that you're intelligently and politely continuing this debate. Maybe it is not worth your time because of my cynical attitude. I have very little respect for Quora, HN, retweets, or bookmarks which are accomplished with a click. If it makes you feel better, something I wrote also reached the front page of HN and received an undue number of upvotes, retweets, and social bookmarks by people who I guarantee have not read even 1% of the works I pointed to -- all because the blog post followed the linkbait formula. I Truly Believe that people bookmark/upvote/retweet things they "intend to read" but never actually read, and that this systematically increases the level of noise masquerading as signal on the web. Having stated that background - some of the response you got on Quora looks fine; the intelligent professors retweet just as sheeply as everyone else since the private cost is $0; and bookmarks signify nothing more than that this story reached the front page of HN. Cheers, thank you for the rational back-and-forth.
    - helwr 15y ago
      Cheers
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]

by helwr 15y ago

crasshopper 15y ago

I did look closely at this list. I commented because it's such a typical example of unearned upvote candy. I could have assembled this list (as a non-computer scientist) in less than an hour just by looking at the usual places I look for lecture notes and following the typical linkbait-maker advice of leaving a brief comment and headings. The author admits s/he is still working through the material and the details on each are minimal, so this curator ≠ expert. Nor is the field "highly specialized". arxiv/math.QA is specialised. Welding less-than-1cm aluminium for a particular part in powerboat engines is highly specialised. Computer Science Major is an extremely broad area of study. To me this is exactly a "clusterf_ck of references".

helwr 15y ago
Ok, I should have renamed it from the original title given by the author to "Excellent List of Distributed Systems and Relevant CS Courses With Good Lecture Notes, Assembled by a University of Cambridge PhD in Mobile Distributed Systems, Zookeeper Committer and a Glorious Systems Engineer Who Lives and Breathes Distributed Systems at Cloudera" to get less upvotes. Just read the rest of his blog. This is not a trivial list of references that you can compile by googling without thorough understanding of the subject matter, trust me, I've been digging this field for too long [1] Alternatively you can ask hundreds of people who re-tweeted this link[2], bookmarked it on their Delicious [3], or those who study it now, why did they think it was good. Look at their profiles, what percentage of them are dumb link-followers? Or simply try to compile and post a list of courses with the same title and see how many upvotes/retweets/bookmarks it gets and how quickly it disappears from the front page if it gets there in the first place. HN users are largely linkbait-averse, that's what I like about this community. [1] http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-good-resources-for-learning-about-distributed-computing http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-good-resources-for-learni... [2] http://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/%22advanced%20computer%20science%20courses%22 http://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/%22advanced%20computer... [3] http://www.delicious.com/url/6c0121386126295cd80dc3da665267ba http://www.delicious.com/url/6c0121386126295cd80dc3da665267b...
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- crasshopper 15y ago
  helwr, I respect the fact that you're intelligently and politely continuing this debate. Maybe it is not worth your time because of my cynical attitude. I have very little respect for Quora, HN, retweets, or bookmarks which are accomplished with a click. If it makes you feel better, something I wrote also reached the front page of HN and received an undue number of upvotes, retweets, and social bookmarks by people who I guarantee have not read even 1% of the works I pointed to -- all because the blog post followed the linkbait formula. I Truly Believe that people bookmark/upvote/retweet things they "intend to read" but never actually read, and that this systematically increases the level of noise masquerading as signal on the web. Having stated that background - some of the response you got on Quora looks fine; the intelligent professors retweet just as sheeply as everyone else since the private cost is $0; and bookmarks signify nothing more than that this story reached the front page of HN. Cheers, thank you for the rational back-and-forth.
  - helwr 15y ago
    Cheers
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]