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> People who are really scary good at things, good enough to do them in many different varied ways, will tell you that.
People who are "really scary good at things" will give you such fasntnig protips as "Just draw the fucking owl.", "Have you looked up the OSI model?", or occasionally "I'm not here to spoonfeed you, niglet. If you had any real passion for the subject you would have read everything you can get your hands on by now..."
even in books intended to be manuals and inspiration, they are obnoxious and specifically designed to damage morale and keep newcomers beyond the gates. for example, this passage from "Zero to Maker"
>The toaster seemed to have been a perfect challenge: an everyday object most people use regularly without a single thought given to its inherent ingenuity and utility. For Thwaites, the first step in the process was acquiring the toaster he had in mind and breaking it down for parts. He needed to understand exactly what he was trying to re-create. After completely disassembling and laying out the nearly 400 components built from roughly 100 different materials, he quickly realized the enormity of his endeavor. I knew exactly how he felt. I had run into a similar quandary. With the vague goal of re-skilling myself, I quickly ran up against the enormity of my quest: What did I actually want to make? What tool or tool family should I start with? Should I practice my woodworking skills or spend time learning about 3D printing? Thwaites wisely opted to redefine the scope of his project, and decided he would recreate just the main operating system of the toaster, or in Thwaites’ words, “the bare minimum from which I think I can make a toaster that retains the essence of toasterness. These are: steel, mica, copper, plastic, and nickel.” Even after he scaled down his goal to recreating only 5 of the nearly 100 materials, Thwaites still had an enormous challenge on his hands. He had no idea where to get the materials, or even where to start looking.
>His initial, simple question had evolved into an exposition of how unthinkably hard it is to make anything, let alone do it by yourself.
From a fucking book intended as a newbies' engineering manual, based on FPGAs and simple factoring There is nothing about COTS parts usage, and the high technology known as "Stamping" is introduced incredibly late as a revelation to the author and a high technology for the reader to only pursue after exhausting the limits of 3d printing.
or here, from a book on Assembly. Not even 6502 assembly or anything, just "Assembly For Linux." Awesome! Assembly for a system that is already vastly higher level than that. x86? x64? ARM? Something else? Fuck you for asking.
>This book starts at the beginning, and I mean the beginning. Maybe you’re already there, or well past it. I respect that. I still think that it wouldn’t hurt to start at the first chapter and read through all the chapters in order. Review is useful, and hey—you may realize that you didn’t know quite as much as you thought you did. (Happens to me all the time!) But if time is at a premium, here’s the cheat sheet:
>1. If you already understand the fundamental ideas of computer programming, skip Chapter 1.
>2. If you already understand the ideas behind number bases other than decimal (especially hexadecimal and binary), skip Chapter 2.
>3. If you already have a grip on the nature of computer internals (memory, CPU architectures, and so on) skip Chapter 3.
>4. If you already understand x86 memory addressing, skip Chapter 4.
>5. No. Stop. Scratch that. Even if you already understand x86 memory addressing, read Chapter 4.
Instantly it makes assumptions about the reader, and insults him. Rather than just providing a simple summary of chapters for reference, it makes a big deal out of it. What if I'm a 60 year old grognard who just needs a modern command reference? Fuck me for being presumptous. What if I'm an aspiring speedrunner who wants to know how Arbitrary Code Execution works? Looks like I need to be remined of my incompetence for daring to try to learn. |
