Dad-of-Four, Ex-Teleco engineer, entrepreneur, self-taught dev, interested in tech, science, and life on a broad scale. Always busy developing and learning. Currently Building Q-Droid.
I totally agree with you about the value most people seem to place on reading material. I have personally decided to ignore all outside trends regarding trying to get people to read. Went the Substack way, tried to get my RSS feed to auto cross-post here to DEV, etc. And found it exactly as you said above; 100 likes for 100-times repeated (and mostly half so, work) and anything that is longer than a 3-min read gets totally ignored.
I learn so much better when — to quote you — "crafting meticulously" at something I'm interested in understanding well. And the tools we have available today are great!
I write "manuals" about all the software dev topics I'm learning, 30-50-80 page monsters sometimes. And I make sure that I put them together in a way to make it easy to; find relevant info quickly and easily, even dynamically reference to other "manuals" or a specific section in one, and build up a library covering anything from basic HTML/CSS/JS dev through to NodeJS+PHP back-ends, micro-services, DevOps, CySec, NginX/Apache server config, Cloudflare CDNs, Cloud DBs, API sec, etc.
I mean SW dev is NOT easy. The abstraction layers are hectically fuzzy and obscure to any experienced observer. Adding the IaaS, PaaS underneath it all makes it 10X worse. However, after two years doing this, it's as if the fog is lifting. Frustration levels are down 95% and I can start to see the way all the interdependent components interrelate and form into one huge organism.
And sorry you can't cover that kind of complexity in 3-minute pretzel crumbs, expecting to understand remotely how these things are connected and dependent on each other. If the crumbs aren't connected into a whole pretzel, you have no idea you're even eating a pretzel, forget how it's supposed to look or taste.
I'm chuckling, because it's sad and ironic. People that put their hearts into something and create really good stuff simply gets ignored in favour of the "3-minute Goldfish" material that continues to swirl round and round in a bowl, endlessly repeating itself. In the beginning I had hell eating goldfish food. You spot something new and seemingly shiny, just to find it thin and flaky. Having no substance whatsoever.
So, I decided to start writing for myself, and nobody else. And I love it! If someone really wants to know one possible solution to A,B, or C, that I've covered in public, then great if they read the whole damn thing and benefit from it. There are no "publishing timelines" as I decide to share what I have learned when I'm happy it's of value and forms a distinguishable part of the whole, referencing the whole, and placing it into proper context.
If you feel the need, you can always feed it to folks one page at a time, but the admin load going with that is not worth it in my opinion.
If you want some reading material on SW dev with more substance and value for money, Substack is NOT the place. Well it might change, seeing that you can publish books on there now too it seems, and they have a Stripe payment platform integrated should you want to get paid for your more hardcore stuff. I find SitePoint a very valuable paid subscription seeing there you get steak, eggs, fries, a salad, desert AND a cappuccino for your money. Not to forget Quincy Larson's freeCodeCamp stuff. Many valuable materials and references to quality info there too. DEV.TO has it's value for me in the sense sometimes the commentors refer you to valuable tools and resources, or al least to a starting point of such. And of course to have long-winded conversations here with cool people like you now and then :-)
In ref to; "My conundrum is that I love crafting meticulously a nice long article + (Gosh, I am back to square one now ^^')".
Stick to your guns Lucy. Someday, there will be a reward and an appropriate one. Probably not from the quadrants in the galaxy you are expecting them to come from at the moment, but who knows, you might just peak the interest of the Vulcans or Asgard out there.
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I totally agree with you about the value most people seem to place on reading material. I have personally decided to ignore all outside trends regarding trying to get people to read. Went the Substack way, tried to get my RSS feed to auto cross-post here to DEV, etc. And found it exactly as you said above; 100 likes for 100-times repeated (and mostly half so, work) and anything that is longer than a 3-min read gets totally ignored.
I learn so much better when — to quote you — "crafting meticulously" at something I'm interested in understanding well. And the tools we have available today are great!
I write "manuals" about all the software dev topics I'm learning, 30-50-80 page monsters sometimes. And I make sure that I put them together in a way to make it easy to; find relevant info quickly and easily, even dynamically reference to other "manuals" or a specific section in one, and build up a library covering anything from basic HTML/CSS/JS dev through to NodeJS+PHP back-ends, micro-services, DevOps, CySec, NginX/Apache server config, Cloudflare CDNs, Cloud DBs, API sec, etc.
I mean SW dev is NOT easy. The abstraction layers are hectically fuzzy and obscure to any experienced observer. Adding the IaaS, PaaS underneath it all makes it 10X worse. However, after two years doing this, it's as if the fog is lifting. Frustration levels are down 95% and I can start to see the way all the interdependent components interrelate and form into one huge organism.
And sorry you can't cover that kind of complexity in 3-minute pretzel crumbs, expecting to understand remotely how these things are connected and dependent on each other. If the crumbs aren't connected into a whole pretzel, you have no idea you're even eating a pretzel, forget how it's supposed to look or taste.
I'm chuckling, because it's sad and ironic. People that put their hearts into something and create really good stuff simply gets ignored in favour of the "3-minute Goldfish" material that continues to swirl round and round in a bowl, endlessly repeating itself. In the beginning I had hell eating goldfish food. You spot something new and seemingly shiny, just to find it thin and flaky. Having no substance whatsoever.
So, I decided to start writing for myself, and nobody else. And I love it! If someone really wants to know one possible solution to A,B, or C, that I've covered in public, then great if they read the whole damn thing and benefit from it. There are no "publishing timelines" as I decide to share what I have learned when I'm happy it's of value and forms a distinguishable part of the whole, referencing the whole, and placing it into proper context.
If you feel the need, you can always feed it to folks one page at a time, but the admin load going with that is not worth it in my opinion.
If you want some reading material on SW dev with more substance and value for money, Substack is NOT the place. Well it might change, seeing that you can publish books on there now too it seems, and they have a Stripe payment platform integrated should you want to get paid for your more hardcore stuff. I find SitePoint a very valuable paid subscription seeing there you get steak, eggs, fries, a salad, desert AND a cappuccino for your money. Not to forget Quincy Larson's freeCodeCamp stuff. Many valuable materials and references to quality info there too. DEV.TO has it's value for me in the sense sometimes the commentors refer you to valuable tools and resources, or al least to a starting point of such. And of course to have long-winded conversations here with cool people like you now and then :-)
In ref to; "My conundrum is that I love crafting meticulously a nice long article + (Gosh, I am back to square one now ^^')".
Stick to your guns Lucy. Someday, there will be a reward and an appropriate one. Probably not from the quadrants in the galaxy you are expecting them to come from at the moment, but who knows, you might just peak the interest of the Vulcans or Asgard out there.