5 ms·

Sharpening the Saw

30 points by twampss 18y ago

jrockway 18y ago
I disagree about his choice in link aggregation sites. HN rarely has any good programming articles. Programming Reddit is all programming articles, but they are usually so stupid that it's not even worth checking out. (And God help you if you accidentally start reading the comments.) If you want something passive to do, I recommend reading the blog aggregator for your favorite programming language (Planet Perl, Planet Haskell, etc.). There is obviously some junk in there too (the Perl people get to read all my Lisp articles), but the articles are generally "primary sources" describing new projects and techniques. (That is to say, the author of new module foo is the one talking about it. It's not some pundit that thinks it's cool.) Anyway, read social news sites if you want, but remember that they are mostly entertainment, not work. If you want to be a better programmer, the most important thing to do is to program and be aware of other ways of doing things. Read the source code to your libraries. Read the academic papers that the documentation links to. Experiment with new ideas and techniques. Those things will actually make you a better programmer. Reading blogs, not so much.
- Xichekolas 18y ago
  > all my Lisp articles Completely off topic (and I apologize to everyone else), but in viewing your profile to find all your Lisp articles, I noticed we are rocking the same top color... it is quite pretty.
  - yan 18y ago
    I like 77aaff. Try it out.
- derefr 18y ago
  > the author of new module foo is the one talking about it. It's not some pundit that thinks it's cool. The author of foo might not be able to explain foo very well. The HN crowd is used to reading the blogs and discussions of "hackers"--people who both program, and think/write/talk about programming. However, there's this huge set of programmers who aren't hackers, and have no idea how to communicate to you why you would want to use this thing they've built (or perhaps just don't care whether anyone beyond them uses it, now that they've scratched their itch.) That's what pundits are for.
Jem 18y ago
Only yesterday, Jeff was agreeing with someone on reddit that HN is "sterile"; that people here are "on their best behaviour", and yet now he's recommending HN like he's used it for years? I don't 'get' the backtracking.
- bena 18y ago
  Well, some very important things happen in sterile environments.
- swombat 18y ago
  I see nothing wrong with changing your mind about things, even quickly. So long as the change is not a quick oscillation between two opposite opinions (which would be two-faced or crazy), changing your mind quickly is a healthy habit.
- kylec 18y ago
  Yeah, I'm not sure how to reconcile this comment: There's the same amount of crap, it's just dressed up in more pretentious verbiage. IMHO. 90% of everything is crap, no matter how "non-lame" your audience is. with his apparent recommendation to use HN the following day. The only thing I can think of is that he wants to dilute the HN community with his own.
  - biohacker42 18y ago
    The only thing I can think of is that he wants to dilute the HN community with his own. A brilliant yet terrifying insight.
- Xichekolas 18y ago
  Wait a second... the guy who, yesterday, had an article on here about how HN was fundamentally flawed due to lack of story downvotes is now recommending it to his following? I'm _confused_.
  - jrockway 18y ago
    I'm _confused_. It's Jeff Atwood. He talks out of his ass and randomly bolds stuff. That's about it. (Remember, he wrote a book review on his blog about a book he clearly hadn't read. All he does is talk.)
ejs 18y ago
The funny thing is that most of Jeff's articles get ridiculed here, and he still recommends it. Does he post here? I don't remember ever seeing him defend an article or anything, not that I think it would be very effective. Does anyone else think Jeff finds a crafty little picture, and then writes a post about it.
- rglullis 18y ago
  I'm suggesting that codinghorror should take the same road that valleywag did: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=510309 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=510309
- anthonyrubin 18y ago
  For some reason his articles are always voted up no matter how ignorant and devoid of insightful observations they are.
  - pchristensen 18y ago
    Duh, it's because there's no downvote button :) http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/03/the-value-of-downvoting-or-how-hacker-news-gets-it-wrong/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/03/the-value-of-downvotin...
- kylec 18y ago
  He doesn't post with any regularity, but he did defend a post he made a few days ago (one where he says Hacker News "gets it wrong" for not allowing downvotes to stories): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=507948 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=507948
- pchristensen 18y ago
  http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=codinghorror http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=codinghorror
johnbender 18y ago
I think most people need to spend more time coding and less time surfing hacker news/proggit. I know I do. The article is still right on though.
- raganwald 18y ago
  A lot of people who read such sites say they ought to read them less. And Jeff's point is that if you don't read such sites, you ought to. It could be that there is a happy median and those of us over it ought to read less while those of us under it ought to read more.
swombat 18y ago
I don't think HN is a good place to sharpen your programming saw. However, it's an exceedingly good place to sharpen your entrepreneurial saw, as well as an excellent place to keep track of the pulse of start-up things on the web.
slackerIII 18y ago
I'm curious how new users from Atwood compare to new users from TechCrunch.
jcapote 18y ago
I could never read codinghorror again after reading this article http://blog.wekeroad.com/blog/nothing-to-say http://blog.wekeroad.com/blog/nothing-to-say
- moe 18y ago
  Same here, I removed coding horror from my RSS reader just the day I read that article. Not because of the article alone, but it summed up with an almost creepy precision what had already unconsciously reduced my interest in his writing over the past months. Most of his blog-posts really match the template. When I dropped the feed there were still 10 or 20 articles in the queue. Don't think I missed out on much.
  - gaius 18y ago
    Dude's problem is that he thinks he's (still) primarily a developer, whereas what he is (now) is a blogger.
pwk 18y ago
I do learn somewhat from reading stuff online, but it's often because I'm inspired to play around with something on my own. Like a lot of people, I learn the most by doing. So I think the point that a lot of people are making is a good one: write more code. There are some concepts from practicing music that might be interesting to consider in the context of coding: 1. Play music that's beyond your current abilities; playing the things you already know won't help you improve. This is pretty easy to put in the context of writing software: don't write yet another little ruby app, write it in Haskell or Io or Clojure or Erlang... 2. Isolate weaknesses and focus on specific things to improve. I think this is tougher in software than in music, because a good musician is always listening to good music to benchmark against, but it's probably not as common for developers to constantly be reading good code. So, maybe go find some good code to read and find ways in which it's better than what you're churning out. 3. Don't practice music with mistakes; it's better to slow down and get it right than to learn it incorrectly. So maybe a test suite for that weekend hack isn't a bad idea... I should do more of that... in both music and coding...
riyaz 18y ago
:-) all these discussions itself is showing HN is good site for tech discussions. If at all his post is worst post ever, i don't agree all of us won't comment like this. Hidden meaning is, we do agree with his post but not completely.

30 points by twampss 18y ago

I disagree about his choice in link aggregation sites. HN rarely has any good programming articles. Programming Reddit is all programming articles, but they are usually so stupid that it's not even worth checking out. (And God help you if you accidentally start reading the comments.) If you want something passive to do, I recommend reading the blog aggregator for your favorite programming language (Planet Perl, Planet Haskell, etc.). There is obviously some junk in there too (the Perl people get to read all my Lisp articles), but the articles are generally "primary sources" describing new projects and techniques. (That is to say, the author of new module foo is the one talking about it. It's not some pundit that thinks it's cool.) Anyway, read social news sites if you want, but remember that they are mostly entertainment, not work. If you want to be a better programmer, the most important thing to do is to program and be aware of other ways of doing things. Read the source code to your libraries. Read the academic papers that the documentation links to. Experiment with new ideas and techniques. Those things will actually make you a better programmer. Reading blogs, not so much.

Xichekolas 18y ago
> all my Lisp articles Completely off topic (and I apologize to everyone else), but in viewing your profile to find all your Lisp articles, I noticed we are rocking the same top color... it is quite pretty.
- yan 18y ago
  I like 77aaff. Try it out.
derefr 18y ago
> the author of new module foo is the one talking about it. It's not some pundit that thinks it's cool. The author of foo might not be able to explain foo very well. The HN crowd is used to reading the blogs and discussions of "hackers"--people who both program, and think/write/talk about programming. However, there's this huge set of programmers who aren't hackers, and have no idea how to communicate to you why you would want to use this thing they've built (or perhaps just don't care whether anyone beyond them uses it, now that they've scratched their itch.) That's what pundits are for.

Jem 18y ago

Only yesterday, Jeff was agreeing with someone on reddit that HN is "sterile"; that people here are "on their best behaviour", and yet now he's recommending HN like he's used it for years? I don't 'get' the backtracking.

bena 18y ago
Well, some very important things happen in sterile environments.
swombat 18y ago
I see nothing wrong with changing your mind about things, even quickly. So long as the change is not a quick oscillation between two opposite opinions (which would be two-faced or crazy), changing your mind quickly is a healthy habit.
kylec 18y ago
Yeah, I'm not sure how to reconcile this comment: There's the same amount of crap, it's just dressed up in more pretentious verbiage. IMHO. 90% of everything is crap, no matter how "non-lame" your audience is. with his apparent recommendation to use HN the following day. The only thing I can think of is that he wants to dilute the HN community with his own.
- biohacker42 18y ago
  The only thing I can think of is that he wants to dilute the HN community with his own. A brilliant yet terrifying insight.
Xichekolas 18y ago
Wait a second... the guy who, yesterday, had an article on here about how HN was fundamentally flawed due to lack of story downvotes is now recommending it to his following? I'm _confused_.
- jrockway 18y ago
  I'm _confused_. It's Jeff Atwood. He talks out of his ass and randomly bolds stuff. That's about it. (Remember, he wrote a book review on his blog about a book he clearly hadn't read. All he does is talk.)

ejs 18y ago

The funny thing is that most of Jeff's articles get ridiculed here, and he still recommends it. Does he post here? I don't remember ever seeing him defend an article or anything, not that I think it would be very effective. Does anyone else think Jeff finds a crafty little picture, and then writes a post about it.

rglullis 18y ago
I'm suggesting that codinghorror should take the same road that valleywag did: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=510309 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=510309
anthonyrubin 18y ago
For some reason his articles are always voted up no matter how ignorant and devoid of insightful observations they are.
- pchristensen 18y ago
  Duh, it's because there's no downvote button :) http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/03/the-value-of-downvoting-or-how-hacker-news-gets-it-wrong/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/03/the-value-of-downvotin...
kylec 18y ago
He doesn't post with any regularity, but he did defend a post he made a few days ago (one where he says Hacker News "gets it wrong" for not allowing downvotes to stories): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=507948 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=507948
pchristensen 18y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=codinghorror http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=codinghorror

johnbender 18y ago

I think most people need to spend more time coding and less time surfing hacker news/proggit. I know I do. The article is still right on though.

raganwald 18y ago
A lot of people who read such sites say they ought to read them less. And Jeff's point is that if you don't read such sites, you ought to. It could be that there is a happy median and those of us over it ought to read less while those of us under it ought to read more.

swombat 18y ago

I don't think HN is a good place to sharpen your programming saw. However, it's an exceedingly good place to sharpen your entrepreneurial saw, as well as an excellent place to keep track of the pulse of start-up things on the web.

slackerIII 18y ago

I'm curious how new users from Atwood compare to new users from TechCrunch.

jcapote 18y ago

I could never read codinghorror again after reading this article http://blog.wekeroad.com/blog/nothing-to-say http://blog.wekeroad.com/blog/nothing-to-say

moe 18y ago
Same here, I removed coding horror from my RSS reader just the day I read that article. Not because of the article alone, but it summed up with an almost creepy precision what had already unconsciously reduced my interest in his writing over the past months. Most of his blog-posts really match the template. When I dropped the feed there were still 10 or 20 articles in the queue. Don't think I missed out on much.
- gaius 18y ago
  Dude's problem is that he thinks he's (still) primarily a developer, whereas what he is (now) is a blogger.

pwk 18y ago

I do learn somewhat from reading stuff online, but it's often because I'm inspired to play around with something on my own. Like a lot of people, I learn the most by doing. So I think the point that a lot of people are making is a good one: write more code. There are some concepts from practicing music that might be interesting to consider in the context of coding: 1. Play music that's beyond your current abilities; playing the things you already know won't help you improve. This is pretty easy to put in the context of writing software: don't write yet another little ruby app, write it in Haskell or Io or Clojure or Erlang... 2. Isolate weaknesses and focus on specific things to improve. I think this is tougher in software than in music, because a good musician is always listening to good music to benchmark against, but it's probably not as common for developers to constantly be reading good code. So, maybe go find some good code to read and find ways in which it's better than what you're churning out. 3. Don't practice music with mistakes; it's better to slow down and get it right than to learn it incorrectly. So maybe a test suite for that weekend hack isn't a bad idea... I should do more of that... in both music and coding...

riyaz 18y ago

:-) all these discussions itself is showing HN is good site for tech discussions. If at all his post is worst post ever, i don't agree all of us won't comment like this. Hidden meaning is, we do agree with his post but not completely.