Two ongoing Decades | Hacker News Reader

Two ongoing Decades

tbray.org

43 pointsjez8 comments

Loved the post, but this single bullet in the post-script list jumped out to me.

> Write about things while you’re learning them; by the time you’re an expert it’s too late to start.

I totally understand what the author is saying here, it's a valid point! But I also think this is why so much content, particularly targeted for folks newer to development, is awful. It's so often just truly the blind leading the blind, with the authors often firmly in a place of not knowing what they don't know yet. Unfortunately I think it goes hand-in-hand with the audience-building trap mentioned at the very end.

To ruin the old Douglas Adams quote:

> those people who must want to ~rule people~ be thought leaders are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.

Of course I don't say that to say we should discourage people from writing, but it does require some discernment on behalf of the reader. On places like Stack Overflow a well-meaning-but-wrong answer might get downvoted or corrected in comments, but someone's personal blog isn't going to have that context.

Importantly, the point doesn’t also say publish them while you’re still learning them. I think maybe there’s an argument for writing early both as a tool to learn a topic (the parts where the argument is weak you need to learn more!) and as a way to have empathy for a beginner audience (you’re the audience!). Neither of these imply needing to publish the post immediately. You could hold onto it for some time, shop it around to friends or coworkers with more experience, etc.

I also agree with the point, because I find there are so many things I want to write about as I’m learning them, but I’ll say “ah, let’s hold off for just a bit” but by the time I feel like I know enough to truly put out a good post, I’ve lost the learner’s spark and enthusiasm I had when first had the idea for a post.

> And most important of all, ignore everything social-media hacks say about building your audience. It’s not that they’re wrong, but as soon as your goal is “building your audience” it’s over. You’re corrupted and you’ve lost.

Yes.

While audience building is all nice and fun, it also sucks some joy out of things. And once you have an audience and it starts going “We don’t care about _that_, write about _this_” … sigh.

I’ll be at 20 years of my blog in 3 years. But I strayed towards the audience and monetization side. Sometimes wish I hadn’t.

Let's fix the title:

Tim Bray's blog is now 20 years old.

Very cool. I looked and I'll be 20 years in October. It hasn't been very active between writing for corporate platforms and putting trivial stuff on social media. But that will probably change at some point.

Emacs lost the long-fought, storied editor wars some decade and a half ago, when the Rails community discovered vim.

Vim, along with all other contenders, were subsequently vanquished by Visual Studio Code.

There's plenty of us hiding out in the jungles who never got word of the surrender.

16 years for me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com