Programming Books w/ Aaron Francis

December 5, 2023

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Transcript

Matt
00:00:00 – 00:00:09
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Matt
00:00:17 – 00:00:51
Today I'm joined by Aaron Francis, developer educator at planetscaleandscreencasting.com. He used to work in a shed for some reason. In my day you had to go to a Borders bookstore at the mall to pick up a copy of MySQL 5 in action if you wanted to learn something about programming. Now you can barely scroll through YouTube without seeing a JavaScript gamer bro soy facing in a thumbnail. We discuss whether or not we need programming books and also touch on printing out documentation sites, why software culture is stuck in the year 2,006, and the conflict between permissive software licensing and lazy reaction content.
Matt
00:00:51 – 00:01:27
Stand for it. Welcome to YAGNI. So today we're here to talk about programming books and I will ask the question, programming books, do we need them? I'll start by saying there's a pithy phrase that says most books should be blog posts, most blog posts should be tweets, most tweets should not be written. So if we are to believe that, then why do we still need so many programming books?
Aaron
00:01:27 – 00:01:45
Well, I have a lot of opinions on that. I am here to take the opposite side and say, yes. We absolutely still need programming books. I think most business books should be blog posts. I will concede that point right away, and I think most blog posts should probably be tweets.
Aaron
00:01:45 – 00:01:51
I think programming books are different, though. So I don't know where you wanna start.
Matt
00:01:52 – 00:02:30
Do you consider programming books to have different characteristics than like a business book? I guess there's some programming books that are like the Java language reference book, and then there's some program books that are more opinion, sort of this is like a process that you should do, and then there's probably some that fall in in the middle. Like, here is my prescription for how you write a PHP app with Laravel, and it's a little bit of reference material and a little bit of opinion. Do you think there's, like, a distinction in that? I mean, I think for me, the obvious one is, like, language reference books, probably not so useful anymore in the era of continually updated online resources.
Matt
00:02:31 – 00:02:43
If you started programming in a certain time frame, you inevitably have a collection of oh, I have the like Ruby 2 Bible, and it's all we're on a different version of Ruby now. And so this pile of paper is is not really useful.
Aaron
00:02:44 – 00:03:41
Yeah. I think that there's a huge difference between a programming book of any kind and a business book, we'll say. 2 a compiled down, but I think most business books I could look behind me and find one. Most business books are like, alright. I get it.
Aaron
00:03:41 – 00:04:10
Like, I get it in chapter 1 or 2 and then it's you're gonna spend the rest of this book explaining the same thing to me again. So I think that's part of the difference between, like, a programming book and a business book. And then in terms of, like, programming book types, I agree that language references are kinda like, I don't really need this at this point. Like, I've got a I think I actually just threw it away recently, but I've got a PHP 5.3 book sitting around and we're at PHP 8.3. What am I gonna do with this?
Aaron
00:04:10 – 00:04:37
Nothing. Here's my central take on why programming books are good is it gives you, like, a universal overview of what is available, what is possible, what is present in the thing. So all of these were on audio, so you can't see it, but all of these over my shoulder are books on MySQL. And so do I go back to these books and reference things? Not very much.
Aaron
00:04:37 – 00:04:59
I did record a course on MySQL. For that, I did go back and reference some of that. But I think what the value of books like that is is it shows you what all is available, and then it gives you slots to put future information. Right? So if you read a book like this and honestly I think you should probably skim the books, like I think you should read them pretty quickly.
Aaron
00:04:59 – 00:05:29
You don't read them in-depth but read them very quickly. And then what that does is that gives you a framework. Then every time you see a blog post, a tweet, something pop up on Hacker News and you see these words that you recognize from the book, now you have a place to slot that information and it doesn't just fall through the gaps because now your brain has been activated to be like, oh, okay. I remember reading part of that in the book. I know what some of that means.
Aaron
00:05:29 – 00:05:39
I have a cursory overview of what this article is talking about. Now I can read this article and get a more in-depth understanding of this one particular thing.
Matt
00:05:39 – 00:06:16
Yeah. I guess a book is probably very good for situations where you don't even know the landscape at all. Right? So like in your MySQL your MySQL books, it's like maybe there's a chapter on windowing functions and maybe you don't necessarily need to read through and fully understand that, but later on, if you do need that, you at least have a shell placeholder for like, oh, yeah, windowing functions is some kind of like sliding date range thing. And if you see it, you know of it versus I think a big criticism of books is that you're not necessarily learning, like, just in time, what you need, or it's not necessarily, like, contextual.
Matt
00:06:17 – 00:06:32
But in that case, like, you wouldn't necessarily even know the words or the concepts to look for. If you're writing SQL queries in your application and you're like, Oh, I'm doing a bunch of like a
Aaron
00:06:50 – 00:07:32
really a I'm now a Jeep driver. I have a Jeep and suddenly every car on the road is a Jeep. That's actually always been true, but your brain was not primed to see the Jeeps on the road until you bought one.
Matt
00:07:32 – 00:07:40
Right. Yeah. It's like your smartphone is not actually listening to what you said. You were looking for, like, stir fry recipes and
Aaron
00:07:40 – 00:07:40
and
Matt
00:07:40 – 00:07:46
it started serving you ads. You just happen to be looking for that and so you notice, whereas before you were sort of like blind to it.
Aaron
00:07:46 – 00:07:56
Yes, exactly. That is exactly correct. And the brain has all these filtering functions, right? Because there's too much information coming in just in life. Forget the Internet, for goodness sakes.
Aaron
00:07:56 – 00:08:22
And so, like, it's the same reason you can recognize or you can hear your name in a whole room of background noise. If you hear your name, you're like, oh, I picked up on that. The brain is specifically set up to do that. And so when you read a book, you're putting all of these, like, all of these placeholders or these signposts in. So the next time you're on Hacker News and you see efficient window functions in MySQL, you're like, oh, I don't need to skip over that.
Aaron
00:08:22 – 00:08:33
Like, that one will stand out whereas, I don't know, garbage collecting and Rust. I don't know anything about that. And I'm just gonna be like, nah, I don't I have no it's not even gonna catch my eye. I think is the point. Yeah.
Aaron
00:08:33 – 00:09:21
So the brain will be like, I don't have a place to put that and so I'm gonna skip over it. So I think one of the great benefits of a book is it lays a base for, like, subconscious information processing. And so you just you read the book and then you carry on with your normal life and suddenly you're able to catch more things. It's like if you start, the best thing to do when you have a big project or a paper or blog post or a video is to start thinking about it as soon as possible even if you're gonna background it because then you start to notice, like, oh, that would actually be a good example for this blog post. Whereas if you sit down and you're, like, I gotta put this thing out in an hour, you don't get the benefit of all of that, like, letting it stew and letting your brain come up with, hey, this is a really good example here.
Aaron
00:09:21 – 00:09:24
You should use that in a week and a half or something like that.
Matt
00:09:25 – 00:09:38
I agree with all this. I think maybe I will turn it back on you and say, if books are so good, why have you decided to read a bunch of books and make a video course versus read a bunch of books and making a book?
Aaron
00:09:38 – 00:09:43
Great question. Nobody reads books. That that is the answer. And I think that presents I
Matt
00:09:43 – 00:09:54
got a quote here from a book, one of these, like, seminal programming books here. It says, by reading this book, you're already learning more than most people in the software industry because one book is more than most programmers read every year.
Aaron
00:09:54 – 00:11:16
Yep. I think that is a 1000% true. It is entirely possible, in my opinion, for you to decide for 1 to decide, a person to decide, I want to make a video course on x y z knowing nothing about that. And if you just pick, like, the top 8 books in that on topic x y z and you read them, you could make a very good educational course on that because nobody reads cover about from the application developer side, how you'd be better at MySQL. And so that's one of the reasons I did it.
Matt
00:11:17 – 00:12:03
I forget where I heard it, but I heard some business advice podcast and somebody was talking about in their company, it was like, how did you learn how to do paid advertising or something? The answer was that, oh, I just picked one book. I didn't even spend much time on the book, but I, like, actually read and did what was in the book versus Yep. People will buy, like, 5, 10, 15 different, like, books and courses, not actually do any of the stuff or not like, oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna get this book about this process, but then I'm only gonna do the 30% of the process that already was what I was doing. So I think there is something there that definitely books are useful in that regard just because they're almost a little bit like forbidden secret knowledge or something because, like I said, nobody is going to sit through that and put in the work.
Aaron
00:12:03 – 00:12:29
Yes. On the other side of reading a book, there's untold riches. I mean, it's crazy. You can read a book on something you probably already know pretty well and you'll realize, oh, there are so much more whether it's patterns or features or best practices. You'll just realize there's so much more here than whatever shows up on my Twitter feed or or the top of hacker news.
Aaron
00:12:29 – 00:12:48
Like, there are some really boring basic fundamental things that I can learn from a book in a field that I'm already pretty good at, but nobody ever picks it up. Everybody thinks it's out of date, it's for beginners or whatever. And so, honestly, if you wanna get ahead, read a programming book. It's very easy.
Matt
00:12:48 – 00:13:22
Do you think there's something to reading a physical book versus a digital book? And if not, do you think there's a distinction between reading a book and, like, reading the documentation or guides for a tool? Because I think a lot of the software work that we do these days is like gluing together different libraries and packages and tools and frameworks. And it's like, I don't know that I would necessarily advise someone that wants to get better at using Tailwind to go find a dead tree Tailwind book. I like programming books, man, but it's 2023.
Matt
00:13:22 – 00:13:24
I'm not going to go to Barnes and Noble.
Aaron
00:13:24 – 00:13:33
Well, you've just hit me in several sensitive places. I love Barnes and Noble. Love going there. I love O'Reilly books. Love reading them, and I love reading them on paper.
Aaron
00:13:33 – 00:13:46
But, yes, I take your point. Yeah. So I think Tailwind is another good example as compared to something like my sequel. Right? One of these books I have back here is, like, from 2012, and I bought it, like, a year ago.
Aaron
00:13:47 – 00:14:25
And I read through it and it was still pretty good. If you were to read through a book on Bootstrap from 2010, it'd be like, this makes no sense. This is stupid. So multiple questions. I think dead tree is better in my opinion or rather, let's say, it's better for me for reference material.
Aaron
00:14:26 – 00:14:33
So for reference material, I will buy a physical book or I will print stuff out and read it on paper.
Matt
00:14:34 – 00:14:48
Well, you are a monster because we've seen on Twitter photos of you with your own hand bound Oh, heck. Yeah. Documentation book sitting on the beach with a a highlighter. So I'm not sure I'm not sure that you're not Yeah. The average
Aaron
00:14:48 – 00:14:49
use case. Yeah.
Matt
00:14:49 – 00:14:49
Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron
00:14:50 – 00:15:15
So so let's talk about that because I was reading all these MySQL books, and I like being able to read it on paper because I like being able to highlight it. The digital detritus, if I were to, like, I don't even know what I would do, add it to Evernote, r I p, like, where would I put all these notes? And so I like being able to highlight it physically, but then the documentation is a whole another thing. Right? So the MySQL docs have 2 section.
Aaron
00:15:15 – 00:15:51
There may be 14 or 15 chapters of it and 2 of these sections are really really high impact sections and one of them is on, like, optimizing MySQL and it covers, like, indexes and writing good queries and that's a really good one. And the other one is data types. And so it covers, like, when should you use date versus date time versus timestamp. And I think if you wanna get ahead, I think another extremely easy hack is to read the documentation for the tool that you're using. People don't read much less reference the documentation.
Aaron
00:15:51 – 00:16:24
They'll, like, come across a specific issue and never go look at the docs and just run into a wall for 4 hours until they figure it out. So that's just referencing the docs. Reading the docs comprehensively from front to back, again, is going to give you this it's basically like a mini map in a strategy game. Like, you get to see the entire world and then you know in the future, oh, I'm writing a command line and I need to validate input from the user, an optional argument from the user. I remember that that is possible.
Aaron
00:16:24 – 00:16:37
I'm gonna go look at the docs. Right? Just remember immediately that how to do it, but I think reading, it blows my mind. I don't know what mechanics do, but surely they read the manuals for the cars that they're working on. Right?
Aaron
00:16:37 – 00:17:03
And we like let's take Laravel or Rails, for example. Or, like, these professional Laravel or Rails developers and we've never read the documentation. It's like, man, like, you gain a ton from experience, of course. But knowing what is available, if you wanna, like, any of the listeners wanna test this theory, read through the documentation of your favorite framework or library or whatever, find something that you didn't know and tweet it out and see how many other people didn't know that.
Matt
00:17:03 – 00:17:04
They're like, oh, you're a genius.
Aaron
00:17:04 – 00:17:07
You're like, no, dude. I've read the doc I read the documentation.
Matt
00:17:07 – 00:17:30
I wonder how we sort of got here a little bit because the thing that comes to mind for me is at some point when you've programmed enough, you'll say, oh, I don't need program for 5 years, right? I don't it doesn't matter what language. I can pick up another language. And so I think you probably reached the point where you don't want to like go back to the beginner mind when when it comes to a new language. So you're like, okay, I've done Java for 5 years.
Matt
00:17:30 – 00:17:54
I'm gonna go write PHP. And you know enough programming that you can sort of flail around by just trying things versus if you didn't know anything at all or you're still very early in your career, maybe you would Just pick it up, and you'll be fine.
Aaron
00:17:55 – 00:18:29
I don't know where that comes from. The cynical part of me wants to say that that's just plain arrogance, people being like, I don't need anyone's help. The optimistic side of me wants to say that a lot of the stuff does transfer. And so what you're left with is little maybe syntax differences or functions that differ or minor features that differ and, like, you know, at the end of the day, you're still programming, and the hard part is not how do you check to see if a key exists in an array. The hard part is how do you build the application.
Aaron
00:18:37 – 00:19:04
To yourself to let's say, I'm a PHP developer and I decide, okay, I'm gonna go pick up Ruby. I could probably stumble through it. I think I would start so much further ahead if I picked up a Ruby or Rails book and just read through just skimmed through it because then what that does is that links all of my PHP knowledge to Ruby knowledge. And again, I have this framework. I'm be like, oh, okay.
Aaron
00:19:04 – 00:19:24
In PHP, I do it this way. In Ruby, it looks like you do it this way. Even if you could do it a different way. It's nice to know what is the generally accepted principle in Ruby for how you check to see if an array key exists or a hash has a key, whatever y'all call it. Even that, it's like, okay, we have associative arrays, you have hash maps, what are the differences there?
Aaron
00:19:24 – 00:19:30
It'd be nice to get an overview before I just start writing PHP in Ruby. You know what I mean?
Matt
00:19:30 – 00:19:50
Yeah. It seems like in the industry, like, we have these, like, very jarring kind of whiplash effects of I think this is just one of them, right? We see this I think there's parallels. People will say, don't do big design up front. Well, people used to do too much up front, and so they say don't do big design up front, but that means that people don't do any design up front.
Matt
00:19:51 – 00:20:35
What I was thinking when you talked about your example of moving languages and, like, oh, you'll be so much further if you just, like, skim the guides. It's like a lot of times when people start working on a feature, like they want to immediately put fingers to keyboard and start like writing the code. Oh oh
Aaron
00:20:59 – 00:21:13
'm I just read through it and whatever I remember, I remember and whatever I forget, I forget. But it gives me this great sense of peace to be like, I'm just kind of exploring. I wonder what's on the next page. This part's really boring. I'm just gonna skip over it.
Aaron
00:21:13 – 00:21:20
Oh, this code block is interesting. Let me see. That's how they check for keys and a hash. Like, that's really interesting. Let me move on.
Aaron
00:21:21 – 00:21:36
And so I think taking all of the pressure off of I'm gonna read this book and be really good at Ruby when I'm done. No. I'm not. I'm gonna read this book and know the names of some functions and, like, how y'all set up classes and maybe a little bit more. But after that, it's like, yeah.
Aaron
00:21:36 – 00:21:40
Then I'll start watching tutorials or getting my hands dirty or or whatever.
Matt
00:21:41 – 00:21:45
When you were in school, did you, like, actually read the textbooks when they were assigned?
Aaron
00:21:45 – 00:22:05
I honestly didn't read them that much, but what I did was I paid attention in class. And so I have this one professor. I was an accounting major and I have this one upper level accounting professor that I'm still in touch with. He's a great guy and he still jokes with me about the fact that I just would look at him the whole time. I wouldn't take notes.
Aaron
00:22:05 – 00:22:34
Some people are, like, furiously copying stuff down and I'm like, I bet everything he's talking about is basically straight out of the textbook. So if I need to reference it, I can, but I think the better value is gonna be for me to sit here and pay super close attention because again, it's the same kind of idea where he's gonna fill my brain with signposts that I can then later go back in the textbook if I need to and look and be like, oh, yeah. I remember he said this thing about deferred liabilities. I see. Okay.
Aaron
00:22:34 – 00:22:37
This fleshes that idea out a little bit more.
Matt
00:22:38 – 00:23:14
Yeah. I think there's a tension between trying to, like, learn something very quickly, which I think leads to the behavior of, oh, I need to find a problem and then refer back to this book or this resource to solve the problem that I have at hand. It kind of reminds me of, like, when I think back to, like, primary school or whatever, it's like when you have, like, the math textbook and it's okay. I'm gonna, like, go to the, like, problem that I'm supposed to do for the assignment, then go back to the text part of the math book to, like, figure out how to actually solve this problem and only do enough to, like, know how I can solve the problem and move on. There's, like, a pressure to, like, solve it quickly or maybe there's a pressure that's, oh, we expected that you already knew how to do this.
Matt
00:23:15 – 00:23:40
And I think on the other side of that spectrum, though, it's I've worked on some projects where it's like, oh, yeah. Before we actually get started on the project, like, we've got a month before the project starts. Everyone familiarize yourself with this new tool or framework or something. And I find that to be, like, equally ineffective because you don't really know, like, what you're going to need to know. So it feels like you're back to like, I'm just reading this reference book trying to learn everything.
Matt
00:23:41 – 00:23:58
And there's also pressure because we've got this dedicated time to learn this thing. So it's like, yeah, if I'm not able to take this month and like get ramped up or raring to go, is that a failure? So I don't know. I'm not sure if that brings up anything in your mind, but that's just been my experience with trying to learn from books, I think.
Aaron
00:23:58 – 00:24:07
Yeah. I totally buy that point of view. I think you're correct, especially in the okay. I'm gonna spend a month studying. Oh, I wouldn't even do that.
Aaron
00:24:07 – 00:24:35
I'm big book guy. The big book lobby has me, and I wouldn't even do that. I think each one serves a different purpose. So you can read a bunch of books on how to do construction, physical construction, how to build a house, and you're still gonna learn 10 times as much building your first house. But I think what you can learn it's like what you can learn ahead of time in our case is okay how should you build a foundation?
Aaron
00:24:35 – 00:25:28
What are all the tools that you need? And then you get on the job site and you're like okay And I think is a big part of it, right? Because if you don't know that these certain things exist, then you're gonna have a really hard time discovering that on the fly because you don't know what you don't know. Right? You're just gonna be groping around in the dark.
Matt
00:25:29 – 00:26:09
Let's change gears a little bit here. So when I think back to the seminal programming books that I read early in my career and I looked recently and it was like on my blog I used to keep I would do like a write up for every book that I read that sort of was like this is why it matters or like this is what I learned. Like a little book review and so I look back 10 years ago and was like oh I was reading 20 programming books a year And I look now and it's like I don't think I read any programming books in the last year. And so some of that I think is not necessarily the programming books are worse. It's like, well, I've had 10 more years of experience and things like that.
Matt
00:26:10 – 00:26:27
But I'm just kind of curious. I still see when people talk about what are the foundational programming books. They're all from, like, the early 2000. Has no new programming knowledge been unearthed? And I think that's probably not true, but I'm curious if you have any take on that.
Aaron
00:26:28 – 00:26:40
What I imagine you are thinking of as, like, the foundational books are probably less like PHP 5.3 and more like solid design patterns, gang of 4, like that kind of stuff.
Matt
00:26:40 – 00:27:08
Yeah. I mean, the reference I always give is, like, the pragmatic programmer is, like, the book that sort of is everyone says like, yeah, every programmer should read this or whatever. This was published in 1999, so it's coming up on being 25 years old. And certainly, there's been, like, new additions, and I'm sure they've had someone come in and tweak some of the content a little bit. But I think it's it's just interesting that it's like, oh, in the past 25 years, like, nothing has been written that people would say is a replacement for that.
Aaron
00:27:08 – 00:27:23
Yeah. I don't find that to be all that strange, honestly. What I think is going on there and, yeah, I talked about earlier. I was an accounting major, so I don't really know all this computer science stuff. And maybe that's another reason why I value books so highly, which we can come back to.
Aaron
00:27:23 – 00:28:05
But I think what's happening there is a lot of those, like, foundational books are more about architecture and patterns and haven't changed in a 1000000 years. I just think that some things are haven't changed in a 1000000 years. I just think that some things are fundamentally like, some things are fundamental truths about software and they just haven't been shaken yet. I would imagine we would find that across a lot of professions, like, probably something like design or architecture would have similar things like I think there's a book called A Timeless Way of Building and I think it's pretty old. Yeah.
Aaron
00:28:05 – 00:28:13
It's still recommended. It's actually extremely hard to find and very expensive because it's, like, still a pretty good reference point of, like
Matt
00:28:13 – 00:28:23
A house like a house from a 100 years ago, like, looks like a house today. And certainly, there are implementation details inside of it, but fundamentally, it is still 4 walls and a roof.
Aaron
00:28:28 – 00:29:22
World good every year. What does need to be revisited is, like, alright, material science has improved a whole lot, so let's talk about the best way to insulate a house or plumb a house or stuff like that. And so I think these seminal books were written early to middle of where we are in, like, programming history, and that's because they discovered these principles and wrote, like, the base truth on it. And we just really haven't I don't think we've had a big enough shift to, like, necessitate new foundational truths yet.
Matt
00:29:23 – 00:29:46
Yeah. I think something else that's interesting is, like, the early 2000 was sort of the last time when we had, like, a giant media and cultural monoculture where and you can see it in these books. Right? There used to be like 3 or 4, like, big programming book publishers. And these were just because of the way that content was distributed, like we talked about earlier.
Matt
00:29:46 – 00:30:52
Like you go to the Barnes and Noble and like buy the programming book. And so you had to make books that had wide appeal and also the logistics of printing those books and the production costs and all that. It led to this thing where, yes, there is just a handful of like programming books being released. And so I think what happens was people have this shared cultural experience of, like, oh, if you were a programmer in the year 2003, of course, you would say that The Pragmatic Programmer was like an important book because it was the best of the 15 programming books that were available at the bookstore and like the library and your university or high school classroom. And I think now between the Internet and blogging, social media, independent course creators, YouTube, all these things, there's just so many more resources that even if there was books that arguably are more important or do better describe the foundations of programming, it's just like so fragmented that I don't think any of these names rise to the top as you can see things happening in outside of programming too.
Matt
00:30:52 – 00:31:07
I mean, if you think about even like music, who are the big musicians of today? It's like it's still the same ones that were big in like the 2000. Or you have these people that are like, Oh, like, I'm huge on TikTok. Or I have like 5,000,000 Spotify followers, and I've never heard of this person.
Aaron
00:31:07 – 00:31:20
Man, never have I felt older than when people will go on, like, other pod like, my first million or something. Like, yeah, I'm a TikToker. I've got 50,000,000 followers. I'm like, I'm sorry. I have never ever heard of you.
Matt
00:31:21 – 00:31:41
There's so many of these celebrities now that are arguably as popular as they were before but like the media distribution channels are so different. Right? Like it used to be that if you were famous if like you went on Oprah and it's like nowadays there's not that. There's a 1000000 different ecosystems with a 1000000 different celebrities inside each of them.
Aaron
00:31:42 – 00:32:12
I think that's real. Big television has splintered into a long tail of YouTube channels, and I think that's probably pretty true in terms of educational material. There wasn't Alera Casts in 2003. And then Envato started Tuts plus and there started to be some video content, and now there's all kinds of video content and also independent blogs. A person publishing educational material outside of a publisher 20 years ago just wasn't a thing.
Aaron
00:32:12 – 00:32:56
And so I do think that's true. I think one book in the database world that has kind of become, maybe not quite to, like, that level, but has become elevated is goodness, it's called use the index, Luke. I think that's the website is use the index, Luke. And it's just a very, very yeah, there are so many niche channels that there aren't any and there's like I said, there's been no fundamental changes in how we design software. There have been a lot of opinions and some shifts, but, like, the stuff they wrote back then is still pretty spot on.
Matt
00:32:57 – 00:33:39
So do you think that books are sort of banking on that legacy prestige that they have? Because it used to be that was sort of one of the highest accolades you could achieve was you're a published author of a program book that's like, oh, you must sort of know your stuff. So with this explosion in the self publishing and content production stuff, I think it's like very much democratized and given a lot of new voices, an opportunity that they never would have had. But at the same time, how are we now left to like sort through what are someone's credentials for being an expert on this? Does anyone actually write code or should they write code in the way that is described?
Matt
00:33:39 – 00:33:47
And if there are no barriers to entry, how do we then avoid picking our one book that we're gonna read and having it be a bad one?
Aaron
00:33:48 – 00:34:30
I think this goes back to when I was mentioning, you know, I picked up all these MySQL books because I wanted somebody trustworthy. That is still a pretty big deal to me. I still believe and maybe maybe this is an archaic belief, I still believe that if somebody has made it through a reputable publisher, not only do they probably know their stuff, but that book has undergone technical review by more than one person that pretty much knows their stuff. And so I could sum up my thesis with books are a good foundation. And so if we're saying that books are a good foundation, you kinda wanna build your foundation on something that you know is pretty much more often than not correct.
Aaron
00:34:31 – 00:35:01
And then on top of that, you can layer nuance of blog posts or hot takes of tweets or whatever. But having some sort of press worthy foundation is really important to me. And so that's why when I'm entering into a a study of something that I don't really know super well, going straight to a blog puts all of that work back on me. Like, it puts the vetting and the cross referencing and the checking. It puts all of that labor back on me to be like, who is this person?
Aaron
00:35:01 – 00:35:13
Does this person have any idea what they're actually talking about? Or is it just somebody you know, it's got some back end and this is the top of the funnel and they're trying sell me some course, which maybe they're good, maybe they're not.
Matt
00:35:13 – 00:35:36
Yeah. I think the incentives can get misaligned very quickly. And I think a lot of the stuff that I'm seeing in recent years is more like falling in this like edutainment space where it is technically education. It's not wrong necessarily. It's maybe lacking context to appeal or to entertain.
Matt
00:35:36 – 00:36:01
But I think it's really easy for both people to look at this material and think that they are learning or of content.
Aaron
00:36:02 – 00:36:48
Yeah. The edutainment thing is new to me in the past year or so in that I've just started to, like, consume a little bit of it and also started to produce a little bit of it. And I feel torn on the value of it the way that I see some people doing it. So I think my concern with edutainment, and I think you see this on YouTube, I think you basically just see this on YouTube, maybe a little bit of Twitch, but Twitch is kind of its own beast. You see it on YouTube where people will have really really strong opinions and will make a video about why, you know, x is stupid and then they'll make a video later about how they were wrong about x and x is great.
Aaron
00:36:49 – 00:37:32
And you're like, wait, where's the nuance? And I think the thing that they're going for is not strictly education, but more like commentary and of the moment, not like reaction videos, but of the moment reactions. Something popped up on Twitter and they have a hot take or hot opinion about it and they make this really strong stance and then they just move on and they never think about that thing again. And what I'm seeing happen is people that follow edutainment don't discount it as, this is just his opinion on Flutter or whatever the some framework is. This is just his opinion on that right now because he's mad and, like, oh, this is so fun.
Aaron
00:37:32 – 00:38:08
I'm gonna watch it and then move on. They take it as, oh, this is the gospel about this thing. And that makes me super nervous just as, like, the landscape of programming. So any edutainment YouTube videos that I make, I own I still only talk about things that I know a lot about, which ends up being Laravel, PHP, and MySQL because I don't wanna offer hot takes on things that I don't know about because people may not understand that I'm just ranting and they may say like, oh, no, this thing is bad because this random person on YouTube said so. What qualifies me?
Aaron
00:38:08 – 00:38:32
So I think edutainment is super fun to watch, but I would it makes me a little bit nervous. And there are people who do it really really well. I think the Primagen is somebody who does it really, really well. Like, he's clearly a genius, but it's also clearly doing entertainment. And so I think that works out really well, and his opinions are usually based in his experience.
Matt
00:38:32 – 00:39:12
Yeah. I do wonder if we've lost something as an industry because we sort of devalued formal education and, like, you don't need a degree and you can be self taught or there's so many free resources online. For better or worse, a degree requires usually you're being taught by professionals that are credentialed, that have some sort of ethical, if not guidance, then at least a culture of teaching that we are here to teach the material. And obviously, they're trying to make it engaging. But at the end of the day, I think they're maybe more more invested in, like, doing the right thing than doing the popular thing.
Matt
00:39:12 – 00:39:32
Because a lot of times what happens with some of this, I'll just say, like, lower effort content is you opinion, like you get points for that. And then if you go back later and say, Oh, I was wrong. I shouldn't have done that. I've changed my mind. You're like, Oh, wow.
Matt
00:39:32 – 00:39:57
Like you're very introspective. Introspective. Like you get you almost get like double points for being wrong versus if well, if you would have done things in the correct order and thought about what you were saying and said, Do I have a responsibility to the people that are following me to be giving them advice that I actually feel good about? Or like, If this was a friend that I was in the room talking to them in person, is that different than I'm just gonna blast this out to, like, 10,000 people that I'd never directly interact with?
Aaron
00:39:58 – 00:40:10
Yes. Big time. You get points for saying Tailwind is the worst thing ever, and then you get points for saying, oh, I actually tried Tailwind, and it's actually not that bad. And you're like, yeah. That's what I've been saying.
Aaron
00:40:10 – 00:40:26
Where's the nuance in the communication? And I think Twitter obviously doesn't reward nuance. YouTube really doesn't either. I mean, with YouTube, you gotta hook them in the first, you know, 30 seconds and you gotta keep them watching. And if it bleeds, it leads.
Aaron
00:40:26 – 00:40:41
Right? Like, people want hot takes and opinions and controversy. And so I'm trying to carve out this niche of I'm not gonna give you controversy. I'm gonna tell you my opinions on things I know deeply and basically ignore everything else.
Matt
00:40:58 – 00:41:46
So how do we as consumers and or producers of content, how do you fight against the treadmill of, like, lower effort content can be churned out faster than good stuff can be produced? Like I know for instance, you spent a lot of time making a video recently and then other people have just been, oh, I will take that video and I will like stick my face in the corner and I will chime in every 30 seconds with cool or no, I don't agree or wow. And then they're basically piggybacking off of your effort. And so on one hand, I can see arguments like, oh, it's being exposed to new people and some people are actually providing thoughtful commentary. Some people are, in essence, like re uploading the work in your intellectual property that you just spent countless hours producing.
Matt
00:41:47 – 00:41:52
I'm curious if you have any thoughts on that or if that's something you're sort of wrestling with or how you see that playing out.
Aaron
00:41:53 – 00:42:18
So the first question is, like, how do we as consumers basically judge slash protect? I think there is at least one way. Maybe there are a couple ways. There are people for whom publishing content has higher stakes. So when I created that MySQL for developers course, I was publishing that under PlanetScale's brand.
Aaron
00:42:18 – 00:42:52
Like, I'm doing that as an employee of PlanetScale. And so I've got a lot on the I've got a lot of skin in the game there. If I'm going to go and speak on behalf of PlanetScale, you better believe that every one of those videos was reviewed for technical accuracy by somebody smarter than me inside of Planet Skill. And so I think that's one way that, like, unfortunately, brands still matter. You can pretty much still trust that anything coming out of our RPCSS tricks like anything coming out of there is probably of pretty high quality.
Aaron
00:42:52 – 00:43:26
And again, what you're doing is you're outsourcing a little bit of that to the brand because you are kind of assuming that somebody inside of there has checked it. And once you get to content mill levels, like I think Digital Ocean just churns stuff out and I assume they have some sort of check and balance, but like they're publishing 5 articles a day. It's like, it makes me a little nervous. So I think you can inherit some credibility from the brand. If you go and you find a single YouTuber that's doing things without any association to anyone, it's like they could say whatever they want.
Aaron
00:43:26 – 00:44:09
I mean so that like, you kinda have to you have to get a trustworthiness score from somewhere. And maybe that's you follow them on Twitter and you've followed their YouTube and you know that this person has reasonable takes and so therefore you don't have to continually check is this a reasonable take. You can be like, I I trust that individual. I mean, that's how that's how life has happened for 1000 of years. So I think the other question about remixing, repurposing, reacting and it was a video of and it was a video of a guy called the Primagen and he watched on stream or, like, yeah, actually on stream and recorded it.
Aaron
00:44:09 – 00:44:25
He watched my PHP doesn't suck anymore video and reacted to it. And so the deal is he's on a green screen and my video is playing in the background. He's in the corner. He's watching it and pausing it and talking about a bunch of stuff. The way that he did that, I'm totally fine with for a few reasons.
Aaron
00:44:25 – 00:44:41
One, his channel's like 10 or 12 times bigger than mine, maybe 20 times bigger than mine. It's like, that's awesome. Thanks for the views. The views don't go to me, but he exposes me to a lot of people that I don't know. The other reason I'm okay with that is because we talked about it before.
Matt
00:44:46 – 00:44:47
And
Aaron
00:45:08 – 00:45:32
shtick is, like, being a character, but he's one of the nicest guys. And so that I'm fine with. If somebody and if you watch the video, you can see that he's constantly comparing and contrasting People that just watch it and pause it and like, oh, that's crazy. People that just watch it and pause it and, like, oh, that's crazy, and then keep watching. I'd be like, dude, that's kinda lame.
Aaron
00:45:33 – 00:45:56
So there's this whole landscape of, like, weird YouTube ethos, and I know that Theo, who's another big youtuber, did a react video to, like, a full documentary, recorded himself watching a full documentary, and the people that made the documentary were like, hey, can you take this down? And he was like, no, I'm not gonna do that. I'm like, what? There's just there's there's I don't fully understand the culture yet.
Matt
00:45:57 – 00:46:13
Yeah. This is one of those things that, like, it's still settling out, like, what the norms and expectations should be. And I think it's interesting. It's well, if it's a big channel, then we're giving you exposure And it's, like, okay. So what is the number of subscribers where it's okay to, like, infringe someone's copyright?
Aaron
00:46:13 – 00:46:37
Yeah. I don't know. And I don't think I would do it because I don't have enough to say about things that I don't know. I guess I could do it through a PHP video, but in terms of infringing copyright, I wouldn't do it without asking permission, which Primagen had my full permission and I was, like, excited when he said he was gonna do it. So that's a huge thing to me is does the creator want you to do it?
Aaron
00:46:37 – 00:46:38
And I wanted him to do that.
Matt
00:46:38 – 00:47:03
Yeah. I think software culture in general has been fairly anti copyright as a whole, like the whole, like, kind of open source movement and things like that. I think the interesting part is that what that led to was, like, people developing more permissive licensing. But then I think it's like on the other hand, people assume that everything is like MIT licensed and it's like, no, like, we support software licenses. Right?
Matt
00:47:03 – 00:47:23
And yes, my license says like don't do this and you're breaking the license and they're like, but don't enforce that. So I don't know. I think there's a lot of weird culture clash things of what is fair in, like, media criticism and, like, how does that interact with well? Is it media criticism if you are reading someone's blog post on your YouTube stream? I don't know.
Matt
00:47:23 – 00:47:29
I don't think these are, like, well tested both legally or ethically of what should you be doing.
Aaron
00:47:30 – 00:47:46
Yeah. I don't know. If anyone else wants to do a react video to any one of my videos, I would request that you ask me first and then we go from there. But, like, somebody did just take the PlanetScale course videos and upload them to YouTube. It's like, well, you can't do that.
Aaron
00:47:46 – 00:47:54
And so we had to do legal strikes to take them down. So, yeah, there's some stuff that's super clear and then some that's like, you should probably ask the creator.
Matt
00:47:54 – 00:47:57
Aaron, information wants to be free.
Aaron
00:47:57 – 00:48:07
Sure. Also, Aaron wants to have money to have food to put on the table, so those two things kinda stand opposed to each other. Yeah. Information wants to be free. Okay.
Aaron
00:48:08 – 00:48:14
There's a whole rant there. But, yeah, our legal department didn't love that very much. We took care of that pretty quickly.
Matt
00:48:15 – 00:49:15
So we've come to the end of the episode here and as we do, we must ask the question, programming books, do we need them? Getting at at yagney.fm, and find me on Twitter at_ Swanson.
Me

Thanks for reading! My name is Aaron and I write, make videos, and generally try really hard.

If you ever have any questions or want to chat, I'm always on Twitter.

You can find me on YouTube on my personal channel or the Try Hard Studios channel.

If you love podcasts, I got you covered. You can listen to me on Mostly Technical.