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Its pretty hard to trust a lot of the eng content on the web right now; so much blogspam, self promo stuff from frankly underqualified people who are trying to

Its pretty hard to trust a lot of the eng content on the web right now; so much blogspam, self promo stuff from frankly underqualified people who are trying to build up a profile to get hired. Somehow I still don't feel that way about StackOverflow. Google and random results though... yikes.

your_username 4y ago
aliqot 4y ago
Until now I had not found an eloquent way to express that emotion, but you come close. Somewhere around the time node got very popular, I started to notice a lot of impeccably branded (is that the right word? trendy maybe?) websites with tutorials that used all the right buzzwords to get me interested. Once I'd step through the content, it'd be very low quality. Despite the smooth lines and round edges, a lot of them were riddled with inaccuracies, assumptions, unabashed spelling and grammar issues, stolen content and lots of candid offtopic observations.. Not to mention they all loaded very slowly. I used to joke about it mockingly during the early node days that you could judge the trajectory of a project based on the ratio of bytes dedicated to persona and branding vs actual content. Anything passing the 1:2 ratio generally didn't last long.
- moojd 4y ago
  I am optimistic though. We are still in the early days of server-side javascript. It took 20 years for the greater php community to coalesce around a handful of quality libraries, frameworks, and solutions to things like user management instead of everyone rolling their own or using things like '$_GET["pass"] == "foo"' they they grabbed from a google search. Node is barely over a decade old. We are already seeing patterns mature in the node ecosystem and I hope things keep progressing that way.
  - lowercased 4y ago
    > It took 20 years ... Node is barely over a decade old. We are already seeing patterns mature in the node ecosystem and I hope things keep progressing that way. But... much of the earliest web work (PHP, etc) occurred in the early days of search. Example of quality code, best security practices, etc all were fairly .. rudimentary and hard to find. Just because it took 20 years starting 20 years ago doesn't justify 20 years starting from 10 years ago. There are infinitely more and better resources for just about everything these days.
  - tannhaeuser 4y ago
    > early days of server-side javascript Err ... Netscape's LiveWire introduced server-side Javascript in 1996 even before Java became widely used on the server side. The module convention, the (synchronous) core modules of Node.js, and its canonical http middleware API and express.js/Connect/JSGI is from the CommonJS initiative, a co-op of 2000's SSJS framework developers [1]. [1]: https://www.commonjs.org/ https://www.commonjs.org/
    - Cyberdog 4y ago
      This is an "um ackshually" reply. Nobody used LiveWire and it died a swift death. And don't "um ackshually" me about saying "nobody." You know what I mean.
      - rileymat2 4y ago
        Classic asp also supports JavaScript, it is old and wide spread in the bowels of legacy sites. I thought of node as a victory for async more than anything else.
        Cyberdog 4y ago
        > I thought of node as a victory for async more than anything else. In terms of server-side development? Async is rather useless on the server side. Can't generate a web page or JSON blob with the results of a database query until you actually get those results from the database. I can see the application for something like websockets but I presume most Node sites aren't using those. I figured its success was due to V8 being reasonably fast, plus a generation of front-end-centric developers coming along who had learned to use JS quite heavily on the front end and didn't realize or didn't care that better options already existed on the back end.
- iratewizard 4y ago
  There aren't many good reasons to make good web content like that today. Money? It's way oversaturated with people who can live off $400/y. Recognition? Your content will be stolen by the previous group a thousand times over. To make a difference? There are more rewarding ways to do that if you've got the deep industry knowledge.
brentm 4y ago
Very accurate. There was a time that I enjoyed this stuff but now it just takes too much effort to filter.
ushakov 4y ago
this 100% sometimes i Google stuff i already know just to verify i remembered it correctly lately i've been refreshing my memory on Vue JS and this website comes up a lot: https://thewebdev.info https://thewebdev.info the solutions i read there were often incorrect and misleading i can't imagine becoming a developer today, when most of the stuff you read on the internet bullsh*t of course you can browse the docs, but some docs are tedious to comprehend when all you're looking for is a simple one-line answer
JustSomeNobody 4y ago
It's almost always been like that. When NoSql was the new hotness, there was blogspam and fistfights everywhere. When DI frameworks were the new hotness, there was blogspam and fistfights everywhere. I could go on. Devs see something new, learn enough to be annoyingly dangerous and blog like crazy. Other devs will glazed-eyed follow along because it makes their resume shiny.
begueradj 4y ago
Maybe that's the fault of those "who know" but don't write and contribute online ?
- jjnoakes 4y ago
  I don't think so. If you know where to look then good content is available, but it doesn't get as widely shared because it isn't as interesting to as many people.
- LtWorf 4y ago
  Those who know are fewer, they get outnumbered by the low quality content.

your_username 4y ago

aliqot 4y ago

Until now I had not found an eloquent way to express that emotion, but you come close. Somewhere around the time node got very popular, I started to notice a lot of impeccably branded (is that the right word? trendy maybe?) websites with tutorials that used all the right buzzwords to get me interested. Once I'd step through the content, it'd be very low quality. Despite the smooth lines and round edges, a lot of them were riddled with inaccuracies, assumptions, unabashed spelling and grammar issues, stolen content and lots of candid offtopic observations.. Not to mention they all loaded very slowly. I used to joke about it mockingly during the early node days that you could judge the trajectory of a project based on the ratio of bytes dedicated to persona and branding vs actual content. Anything passing the 1:2 ratio generally didn't last long.

moojd 4y ago
I am optimistic though. We are still in the early days of server-side javascript. It took 20 years for the greater php community to coalesce around a handful of quality libraries, frameworks, and solutions to things like user management instead of everyone rolling their own or using things like '$_GET["pass"] == "foo"' they they grabbed from a google search. Node is barely over a decade old. We are already seeing patterns mature in the node ecosystem and I hope things keep progressing that way.
- lowercased 4y ago
  > It took 20 years ... Node is barely over a decade old. We are already seeing patterns mature in the node ecosystem and I hope things keep progressing that way. But... much of the earliest web work (PHP, etc) occurred in the early days of search. Example of quality code, best security practices, etc all were fairly .. rudimentary and hard to find. Just because it took 20 years starting 20 years ago doesn't justify 20 years starting from 10 years ago. There are infinitely more and better resources for just about everything these days.
- tannhaeuser 4y ago
  > early days of server-side javascript Err ... Netscape's LiveWire introduced server-side Javascript in 1996 even before Java became widely used on the server side. The module convention, the (synchronous) core modules of Node.js, and its canonical http middleware API and express.js/Connect/JSGI is from the CommonJS initiative, a co-op of 2000's SSJS framework developers [1]. [1]: https://www.commonjs.org/ https://www.commonjs.org/
  - Cyberdog 4y ago
    This is an "um ackshually" reply. Nobody used LiveWire and it died a swift death. And don't "um ackshually" me about saying "nobody." You know what I mean.
    - rileymat2 4y ago
      Classic asp also supports JavaScript, it is old and wide spread in the bowels of legacy sites. I thought of node as a victory for async more than anything else.
      - Cyberdog 4y ago
        > I thought of node as a victory for async more than anything else. In terms of server-side development? Async is rather useless on the server side. Can't generate a web page or JSON blob with the results of a database query until you actually get those results from the database. I can see the application for something like websockets but I presume most Node sites aren't using those. I figured its success was due to V8 being reasonably fast, plus a generation of front-end-centric developers coming along who had learned to use JS quite heavily on the front end and didn't realize or didn't care that better options already existed on the back end.
iratewizard 4y ago
There aren't many good reasons to make good web content like that today. Money? It's way oversaturated with people who can live off $400/y. Recognition? Your content will be stolen by the previous group a thousand times over. To make a difference? There are more rewarding ways to do that if you've got the deep industry knowledge.

brentm 4y ago

Very accurate. There was a time that I enjoyed this stuff but now it just takes too much effort to filter.

ushakov 4y ago

this 100% sometimes i Google stuff i already know just to verify i remembered it correctly lately i've been refreshing my memory on Vue JS and this website comes up a lot: https://thewebdev.info https://thewebdev.info the solutions i read there were often incorrect and misleading i can't imagine becoming a developer today, when most of the stuff you read on the internet bullsh*t of course you can browse the docs, but some docs are tedious to comprehend when all you're looking for is a simple one-line answer

JustSomeNobody 4y ago

It's almost always been like that. When NoSql was the new hotness, there was blogspam and fistfights everywhere. When DI frameworks were the new hotness, there was blogspam and fistfights everywhere. I could go on. Devs see something new, learn enough to be annoyingly dangerous and blog like crazy. Other devs will glazed-eyed follow along because it makes their resume shiny.

begueradj 4y ago

Maybe that's the fault of those "who know" but don't write and contribute online ?

jjnoakes 4y ago
I don't think so. If you know where to look then good content is available, but it doesn't get as widely shared because it isn't as interesting to as many people.
LtWorf 4y ago
Those who know are fewer, they get outnumbered by the low quality content.