[AndrewStephens]

When I look back on the really helpful blog posts I have read, they have all been really basic. Whether they described a programming technique or a recipe for a new meal, it was a clear description that was important - not how esoteric the knowledge was.

There is a place for complex blog posts on arcane subjects but posts on "common knowledge" are even more important. There is a 15 year old out there somewhere that needs to know how to use the different smart pointers in C++ or how to properly care for a cast iron pan.

[throwaway219450]

And link rot. A lot of sites from back when are straight up gone, sadly. Maybe you get lucky on archive.org. Or in your pan case, affiliate farming where the bias or technical expertise is suspect.

(Aside, for a lot of cooking I’ve gone back to dead trees and I realized one day I have so many cookbooks, why am I looking at some lifestyle recipe blogger?)

Or the information actually goes out of date and best practices change. There’s been like 25 years of standard revisions since I first learned C++.

[nate]

ha. speaking of the devil. for the "curse of knowledge" mention i made above i had a link that google served me up to a post that was totally rotten now. so i went back in to include the wikipedia version.