26 Jan
2012
26 Jan
'12
6:36 p.m.
On 26 January 2012 20:02, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
There are many different kinds of tech journalism. For starters, there
are the basic formal categories: news, news analysis, previews,
reviews, comparative reviews, features & columns. Then there is the
medium: daily/weekly/monthly. Then there is the audience:
nonspecialist/specialist/trade/domain experts.
It's not all just one thing.
As an outsider, or as a reader, I would not expect people to know or
understand this, but it's as different as building a packing crate
compared to a Chippendale chair.
I have done a bit of all of them.
These days, I write general features for the Register. I occasionally
do news and news analysis - taking a story and explaining it, in
brief, or dissecting it in great detail over 2-3 pages. Those are 2
totally different things.
But mostly, I try to come up with ideas about stuff that the main IT
press isn't writing about but which I know about - such as historical
pieces, or how-to features.
So, for instance, they are interested in a piece on Lisp Machines.
Now, I am aiming this piece at someone who has never heard of Lisp
Machines and has probably never seen a line of Lisp. They are, in the
modern PC industry, forgotten prehistoric monsters: bear in mind that
in the 2012 PC industry, Windows XP is an ancient legacy OS; Pentium
4s are slow elderly CPUs; 2GB of RAM is a small, constrained machine.
Business tends to write off kit in 3 years; hands-on tech staff
typically have 2-3y of experience after which they move onwards and
upwards. Management and architects don't know or care what OS clients
are running.
I am not saying any of this is right or good or proper - it's just how it is.
If I can write a 3000 word brief history of Lisp Machines, explaining
in overview what they were, how they worked, their strengths and
weaknesses, in such a way that anyone who has ever actually /used/ one
does not go "oh FFS this idiot knows *nothing*", then I will have
succeeded.
I am not writing a textbook entry; I am not writing a how-to guide on
booting one or restoring one. I am describing their interesting
features that are different from contemporary computers.
No, I have never seen one or used one. I would *LOVE* to but I don't
know anyone who has one. I don't know anyone who's even running an
emulator.
(If anyone is, in the London area, do please let me know! I can only
offer gratitude and beer, but I would cherish some hands-on time.)
I've asked Stephane Tsacas if he can run up an emulator for me, as my
closest friend off the list, but I don't think he is really
interested. It runs on Linux and he is not a fan of Linux, to say the
least.
You might well condemn me for this. But consider this: there are many
thousands of books, magazines, TV shows, films and educational
posters, models and toys about dinosaurs out there, and not *one* of
those authors has ever seen a dinosaur in the wild.
I am not writing an article for anyone who knows anything about Lisp
Machines. I am writing one for people who have never /heard/ of Lisp
Machines, to try to tell them, in a 5-10 minute read, what was
interesting about them.
I am not going to attempt to defend myself and say that I aim to
produce the sort of in-depth technical piece you would want. I am not.
I probably never will. But there is a need for things that are at a
less formidable technical level than that.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
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Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884
Um. Thanks for
the suggestions, but I have to point out that I can't
really buy and read half a dozen textbooks in order to finish a 2 or 3
thousand word article. I mean, ideally, I'd be knocking out a couple
of such pieces a day if I were a staffer and at least a few a week as
a freelancer. This simply does not permit such a depth of research!
I am not pointign the finger at you or anybody else, I am sure this is
generally the case. But it confirms something that I've suspected fro
some time -- there are far too many people writing about things that they
themselves do not understand, or at least don;t understnad fully....
I've written a few articles in my time, for user group publications. Of
course I am not paid for them. But I do try to do the research first. If
I describe a repair, you can be sure _I've_ done that repair on my own
workbench (if I am reporting soemthign that was suggested by somebody
else, I acknowledge that of course, but I still do it myself to be sure
it works). If I describe how soemthign works, then I don't skip over the
difficult bits. And yes, I've spent everal weeks buildign and testing
just ot write a 2 or 3 page article.
But I've read far too many articles and books which are either incomplete
or downright wrong. Not just computer books either. I have a book
entitled 'Telephone Porjects for the Evil Genius'. It's a classic. I
think there's a mistake on each and every scheamtic. Certainly 90%+ of
the projects can't work if you build them as shown. Some are 'simple'
errors of drawing (like wirs joining where htey shouldn't be), some are
fundamental design errors. I don't believe the author has built all the
projects in the book and got them to work, if he had, then he'd have
spotted things like totaem pole outputs contending with each other (!).
Ho hum...