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Can’t that be said almost verbatim about any academic field?

• kazinator 4y ago
  It can't even be said about the academic side of computing. Programming books aren't academics; they are about the entirely arbitrary and ever-changing conventions of some stuff that is made up of pure information, which someone pulled out of thin air. An actual computer science text from 1990 can be very useful; so could a book about electronics from 1990, or mechanical engineering. A programmming book from 1990 is like the repair manual or schematics for some appliance from 1990. Except in the case of the appliance from 1990, at least it was similar to many others: a repair manual for another make and model could actually be useful. We have to imagine a world in which two refrigerators have absolutely nothing in common; the parts look completely different, are hooked up differently and have different names.
  • solarmist 4y ago
    I just mean there’s tons of shit books published in every field. Computers probably have 10x more, but it’s not a new phenomenon. Look at medical books that make it into libraries. Same for psychology or any social science. Tons of history books fall into editorializing so similar can be said of them. And for technical books, (woodworking, drawing, knitting, sewing, etc) they tend to fall into cycles of fads with books that are basically clones of each other.