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 hundreds of articles throwing to your face.
Do you ever feel you read a lot of blogs like spending 4 hours per day on HackerNews and your level is still nowhere? or even you feel knowledge-wise and invincible after reading a lot about a topic and then got shut down in a discussion when the material going to deep.
It's because you are spending too much time reading blogs.
Why blogs are harmful:
- The content is not written for you, it's for the writer! The purpose of blogs mostly ends up in product promotion, technical advancement show-off. Writers rarely think about how much users can learn from it, instead, they tend to throw their experience and achievement to the post. Those typical blog types: How we migrate from X to Y. Why X is better than Y. How did we reach millions of users. Our journey to Y ...
- Blogs create misinformation bias. If you are new to the topic, you easily feel super convinced as you don't have any context as well as exposure. For example, when you read something like "Why does some favorite company choose Rust over Golang", it easily causes a subconscious that Rust is better than Go in most aspects because the favorite company did it. Then the next time you work on related stuff, you will prioritize Rust and find the reasons to choose it over Go.
- Blogs are unstructured. Blogs usually come up with only one post, so writers have to assume every reader has the same basic level of knowledge. Therefore, most blogs are shallow and duplicated. They cannot put a one-page explanation just for a difficult concept that is not so relevant to the post. Multiple misunderstanding gaps from unexplained material can accumulate to a fragile knowledge foundation, which can hinder you from learning a subject more organized next time.
- Blogs are written by unprofessional writers. Most of the tech blogs are written by software engineers or people working in tech. Some are good of course, but most are bad because our profession is not writing. Outlining the writing or giving concise knowledge is an art and it's not easily obtained for new writers after. Moreover, when you switch between different writing styles, your reading speed is also slow down due to context switch.
- It consumes your time. When you spent 30 mins reading blogs, you decided to give up your time reading a book chapter. Even if you cherry-pick blogs to read, you already waste time skimming all blogs.
For those reasons, I think we should reduce our time reading blogs and invest more in structured material like books or courses. If you cannot find the time or have less time for books, it's a red flag.
I still find tech blogs are helpful for the career: they bring you to the outside world, offers diverse perspective, keep you up-to-date with this fast-changing world... But if you are considering Blogs as your source of knowledge, you are learning technology wrongly!
Top comments (10)
I'm not so sure that reducing consumption of blogs is the right approach to this 🤔 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:
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.
Help quality and easy-to-consume writing rise to the top of feeds by actively (and respectfully) pushing down the bad stuff.
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...
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
Ah, apologies 🙏 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. 😞
I’m conflicted now.
Should I listen to what you say, or ignore it because blog posts are harmful?
/joke
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.
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.
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? 😄
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.
Stop reading blogs, but also, spend time reading blogs :D
Thank you :D I fixed