[skilled]

Wow, pretty big sale! Big congrats to Chris.

Interestingly, DigitalOcean has a knack for acquiring these technical dev sites, in 2019 it acquired Scotch.io[0] which was one of the better technical web development sites out there.

Fun fact about Scotch, the founder (Chris Sev[1]) sold the site to DO, joined their team, and later managed to broker a deal to 301 redirect a lot of the pages to his new project Better.dev[2].

Absolute genius.

[0]: https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/scotch-io-is-joining-digit...

[1]: https://twitter.com/chris__sev

[2]: https://www.better.dev/

[archerx]

From the headline on better.dev it says "Hey I'm Chris Sev. Here's My Courses", shouldn't it be "Here are my courses"?

[mcdonje]

From a prescriptive grammar standpoint, you're correct. From a descriptive standpoint, I'm not sure how common that contraction is, but I've heard it before and offhand it seems like it gets used in some regions.

Phonologically, it makes sense that it would gain traction as it's a means of avoiding the effort of the 'ere are' vowel combination. It's an addition rather than an elision, but the underlying motivation of saving effort is the same.

[jonny_eh]

One could even argue that "here's" is now an accepted conjugation of "here are".

[LordDragonfang]

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/here%27s

>1. Contraction of here is.

>2. (nonstandard) Contraction of here are.

Note this has been listed since at least 2006, based on the history.

[hnhamdani2]

As a non-native English speaker myself, I still find native using contraction on "there's two cats" counter intuitive. Sometimes I use the correct grammar "there are two cats" but then it sounds too formal for the native to heard it. Then I have to adjust with the "wrong" way of saying it.

[zarzavat]

There’s nothing grammatically incorrect about “there’s”. The oversight is in confusing a contraction with an abbreviation. “There’s” is a contraction for either “there is” or “there are” and the precise one is given by context. It is not a mere abbreviation for “there is”.

Written contractions are meant to faithfully represent spoken English, in which people indeed say “there’s” for both the singular and the plural.

[CRConrad]

> “There’s” is a contraction for either “there is” or “there are”

But doesn't con-traction mean "pulling together"? You pull the last letter over towards the first ones, squishing out the ones between. Only there is no 's' at the end of "there are" to pull over next to "there".

So "there's" can't really be a contraction of "there are", AFAICS.

> Written contractions are meant to faithfully represent spoken English, in which people indeed say “there’s” for both the singular and the plural.

Sure, it may be a perfectly valid usage, so it's something... But as matter of terminology, whatever that something is, I don't think it's a contraction.

[dspillett]

The way I've explained the correctness of the plural use to a non-native speaker, is that (to use the cats example) there is one group of cats, the group is singular even though its content is plural, so “there is” is correct, therefore so is the contraction. Not explicitly mentioning the group is just another abbreviation, because it is implicitly understood. This avoids the discussion of whether “there are → there's” is valid in written form (which tends to be more strict than verbal use).

[manigandham]

It's not accepted, it's just common ignorance.

[ludamad]

History does not make much distinction between "language misuse" and "paradigm shifts"

[Spivak]

You dirty language prescriptivist! If English speakers and writers use it, it's correct.

[tomjakubowski]

I accept it

[OJFord]

Er, I'll happily take you up on that argument!

[efdee]

These kinds of arguments literally kill me.

[ropable]

This comment needed a sarcasm tag (I think).

[DwnVoteHoneyPot]

Since we're discussing grammer, when you say "literally", you mean figuratively?

[867-5309]

that's almost as annoying as "have you got them?" - "I do" - "do what.. do have? do got??"

[CRConrad]

"Have", obviously. That's the only one that goes with "do", being in the present tense. Otherwise it would be "I did (get them)".

Not that it matters anyway, since "have got" is a weird double-barrelled construct: It means exactly the same as just "have" or "got" on their own, so take your pick.

[867-5309]

"do you have them" and "have you got them" are completely different questions. so no, that answer is wrong (and not obvious)

[saghm]

To be fair, I think "do you have them?" would be more common for a lot of English speakers ("have you got" sounds British to me as an American, but it's possible that this is just a regional American thing). I'm not sure I would either think fast enough to care enough to tailor my automated response to a question like that based on the exact phrasing of the query.

[867-5309]

Americans still use it as a response though, e.g. "You got this!" - "I do!". it's the "I do got" which really bugs me. "I do have" and "I have got" are fine and make sense

[ricardo81]

That sounds like something I would say, a more understandable aspect of Scots, even if it's no richt, ken.

[867-5309]

a speaker of Scots may be excused

[smcnally]

c.f. “It’s raining.” “What's raining?”

[867-5309]

nice one, I'm sure there's a grammatical name for that, maybe in Truss

"She's raining" - "Who is?" - "Mother Nature"

[mbg721]

"This is water!"

[travisd]

I think out loud you'd be more likely to hear "here're your donuts" rather than "here's your donuts"), but when written, here're looks way worse. Language (written, spoken, and otherwise) is interesting and resistant to fitting into nice, neat, tidy boxes.

[nlarew]

"here are my courses" is definitely more grammatically correct for written English but "here is my courses" sounds like something you'd say informally in conversation when you're not overthinking grammar. Maybe the goal is to sound more personable/folksy?

[hunter2_]

I'm guilty of the occasional are->'s contraction when speaking quickly, but I'd never just substitute are->is because that doesn't save a syllable.

[benmanns]

's short for "is the list of"

[gtirloni]

I'd love to read more about that. Is that a new idiom?

[emsixteen]

there's a lot

there are a lot

[AlchemistCamp]

My internal compiler rejects that syntax. It's not uncommon but reading a headline like that does tend to make me less confident that whatever is in the page is worthwhile.

If he doesn't even proofread his headline, how sloppy will the rest of the site be?

[pdevr]

Informal usage, as others have pointed out.

Since it is informal, it can be read as "Hey I'm Chris Sev. Here's My [Collection/Set/List of] Courses", which is grammatically correct.

[devjam]

Yes, agree - if it were the "My Courses" page/section, it could definitely be read as such.

[jorvi]

If it is the possessive article (‘my courses’) then you are correct. If it is a name for the product ‘My Courses’, then Chris is correct.

[tetsusaiga]

The real answer is that its copywriting, which means grammar is nearly irrelevant.

He starts with "Hey I'm Chris Sev" because it's a better headline, which is defined as something that is more likely to make people read the rest of the page. (Defined specifically because I see lots of complaints here that headlines should be descriptive of the actual content, which isn't really what matters, functionally. (I get the impulse though, really.))

[reaperducer]

From the headline on better.dev it says "Hey I'm Chris Sev. Here's My Courses", shouldn't it be "Here are my courses"?

It's the difference between written English and spoken English.

In conversation, it's not unusual for someone to use "here's" in this context. To be correct, especially for display in print or on a screen, the correct words are "here are."

I think that people use "here's" instead of "here are" because "here are" can be difficult to say quickly in conversation, and can sound like "herere," which is indistinct and unpleasant-sounding.

The internet has popularized the use of spoken English online because most English speakers speak English well enough, but fewer English speakers write English well.

[jacobmischka]

Should also say "... person who can make cool stuff". Grammar isn't his strong point it seems.

[infogulch]

I feel like I'd use "These are my courses" just to work around the awkwardness.

[DaltonCoffee]

Horses

[vohu43]

Did the quality of the content on scotch.io change? Can we expect the same thing for CSS-tricks?

[swyx]

scotch's traffic has been in sharp decline since the acquisition https://www.similarweb.com/website/scotch.io/#overview

i'm not really sure what they bought to be honest

[skilled]

I'm pretty sure the content stopped in mid 2020, so a year or so after the sale.

And then eventually was redirected to DigitalOcean.

Also, just to add my own thought to this - CSS-Tricks is of course very loved by people who learned things there, and people who respect Chris Coyer as a designer. But, these acquisitions do have an effect on how people perceive a project, and skepticism is very high on that list.

They seem to be keeping the "Write for Us" option open, with 300$+ a pop per guest post + promotion to your project. If anything, it will become a haven for those kind of posts. If not, they might by some miracle find a really good person (dev or designer) who is willing to take on the reigns for a while. Unlikely, though.

[the_common_man]

Do you know the numbers? Is that what you meant by big sale?