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Blogs are harmful and we are learning wrongly!

giongto35 on February 06, 2020

One of the common problems everyone is facing nowadays is "there is too much information on the internet". Every time you wake up, there are hundre...
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Daniel Brady

I'm not so sure that reducing consumption of blogs is the right approach to this πŸ€” I definitely agree that a lot of blogs are terrible for your health, but like anything that you consume it's not necessarily about consuming less as it is about consuming better.

So I guess I'd suggest a variation on your call-to-action here, and recommend a three-pronged approach:

  1. Don't be a passive consumer of the internet: approach all writing with a healthy dose of skepticism, learn to identify quality writing, and focus our attention on those.

  2. Help quality and easy-to-consume writing rise to the top of feeds by actively (and respectfully) pushing down the bad stuff.

  3. Improve the average quality of blogs by giving feedback to authors and learning to write quality content ourselves!

It's hard, it takes more effort than it should. But it's worth it.

This CrashCourse playlist on navigating digital information is a must-watch resource on this topic:

youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuua...

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giongto35 profile image
giongto35

My CTA is to spend more time read structured material like books instead of blogs. Your points are valid as well. Readers should be responsible for improving writers, and the community should work toward improving the quality of post.

And thank you for your feedback and the link :p

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Daniel Brady • Edited

Ah, apologies πŸ™ the main impression I got from your blog post was that we should stop reading blog posts, not that we should read more structured material like books. You mentioned that a few times, but I think it got lost for me among your points about poorly written blog posts.

In any case, I definitely agree with that point! I used to read a ton more books than I do now: you used to not be able to find me without a book nearby! But these days I spend much more time on my computer doing other things, and make very little time for reading my books. 😞

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Benjamin Botwin

I’m conflicted now.

Should I listen to what you say, or ignore it because blog posts are harmful?

/joke

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Zane Milakovic

I understand your frustration and your point. But the internet is a free place, and one of the best ways to get better at writing is to post on a blog.

I could make these same arguments about forums, Reddit, stack overflow. Even when you get paid writers, a lot of times it’s from a companies blog that has a bias.

I am not sure advocating like this makes sense, as much as educating what makes a good/bad article and why you should/should not trust it. Just like when you are researching for a paper in school, you should of been taught about sources, credibility, etc.

I think one thing that is great about communities like dev.to is the fact we can have a discussion. Blogs enable that, if the readers can participate and that user base is high enough.

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giongto35

You made a great point on the free of the internet. I think the root of blog is still the place for people to share their thoughts. We can just write blog just to share thoughts and don't need any audience. The readers need to be wise and selective :( but it's hard and I haven't reached that as well.

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Ryan Smith

I think blogs are valuable to see other ideas, get inspiration, and to discuss with someone familiar with a topic. Books do not always provide that, as they can be very technical. Considering blogs to be entirely factual and well researched, may not be a great time. My approach when researching or trying to learn something from blogs is to use multiple sources of information and draw conclusions on the quality of what I read.

Also, isn't this post a blog? πŸ˜„

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Zohar Peled • Edited

Blogs are not tutorials, and reading blog posts is not the way to learn programming. It might be a way to get a better understanding of some feature or a process, or to get inspiration, but they are absolutely not the way to learn how to write programs.

As a blog owner myself, I've chosen to name my blog What the # do I know and the the way I describe it is "Some tips and tricks I’ve collected over the years working as a software developer." This is to show two things: 1 - I don't necessarily know what I'm talking about, and if you read something on my blog you should check it yourself if you want to use it, and 2 - It's a collection of tips and tricks, not a tutorial.

I'm not writing a tutorial, and I'm not writing official documentation. I'm writing things from my own perspective - about things I find interesting or ideas I have that I want to share with the world. I could easily bloat the content if I where to write a basic tutorial on my blog, but there are good reasons not to do that: First, there are plenty of tutorials out there already. Second, there's little to no room in a tutorial to bring in your own perspective, and Third, it's just boring stuff to write.

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Mark Davies

I think we should reduce our time reading blogs and invest more in structured material like books or blog.

Stop reading blogs, but also, spend time reading blogs :D

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giongto35

Thank you :D I fixed