As a semi-toxic semi-expert, I think one of the main reasons there is precious little blog-sized content that goes deep is that it’s hard to do. Most subjects, in or out of tech, can go incredibly deep on many, many points.
The more detail that’s included, the harder it becomes to write less. If you ask me to write 500 words on indexing strategies for an RDBMS, I’ll probably manage, but very little will be explained. If you ask me to write 5000 words, there’s no way I’ll hit that target, because I’ll want to explain every tangent, every fundamental, and so on.
The single best blog [series] that manages to pull this off, IMO, is Jeremy Cole’s series on InnoDB [0]. It’s not short taken as a whole, but each article is short enough that it (probably) meets people’s attention spans. I think the thing that makes it so great to me is that it’s written assuming that the reader already understands certain concepts. For example, he doesn’t spend multiple paragraphs explaining what a B+tree is; he links to the Wikipedia page, and then describes how InnoDB uses them.
In contrast, when I write something, I usually find myself assuming that the reader doesn’t have some fundamental knowledge. I usually try to either put it in a section that’s easily skipped, or in a pop-out toggle, but either way, it’s there.
To me, these fundamentals are incredibly important, because a. they’re how I understand things b. I don’t feel that you can operate something to its fullest capability (let alone fix it) if you don’t know how the thing works.
Re: gatekeeping, to me the perfect example is the Linux kernel. Torvalds is notoriously unfriendly, and while you can judge that however you’d like, the man has a massive weight on his shoulders, and letting code in that doesn’t meet his standards threatens that weight. I get it. Then, I also came of age during the RTFM era, so I’m used to it.
The more detail that’s included, the harder it becomes to write less. If you ask me to write 500 words on indexing strategies for an RDBMS, I’ll probably manage, but very little will be explained. If you ask me to write 5000 words, there’s no way I’ll hit that target, because I’ll want to explain every tangent, every fundamental, and so on.
The single best blog [series] that manages to pull this off, IMO, is Jeremy Cole’s series on InnoDB [0]. It’s not short taken as a whole, but each article is short enough that it (probably) meets people’s attention spans. I think the thing that makes it so great to me is that it’s written assuming that the reader already understands certain concepts. For example, he doesn’t spend multiple paragraphs explaining what a B+tree is; he links to the Wikipedia page, and then describes how InnoDB uses them.
In contrast, when I write something, I usually find myself assuming that the reader doesn’t have some fundamental knowledge. I usually try to either put it in a section that’s easily skipped, or in a pop-out toggle, but either way, it’s there.
To me, these fundamentals are incredibly important, because a. they’re how I understand things b. I don’t feel that you can operate something to its fullest capability (let alone fix it) if you don’t know how the thing works.
Re: gatekeeping, to me the perfect example is the Linux kernel. Torvalds is notoriously unfriendly, and while you can judge that however you’d like, the man has a massive weight on his shoulders, and letting code in that doesn’t meet his standards threatens that weight. I get it. Then, I also came of age during the RTFM era, so I’m used to it.
[0]: https://blog.jcole.us/innodb/