Personally, I really like her writing style. She's very honest about the things she doesn't know, which I find a lot easier to relate to than blogposts by some random internet gurus. Behind the self-deprecation she has a lot of really interesting things to say and is really enthusiastic about learning new technologies. Her full archive is well worth reading.

Me too. Her writing is superb. I find her presenting a little more rambling and less informative/entertaining.

It's ballsy to write a blog asking questions about docker.

Dear god, this a thousand times.

It, like, totally works as a Socratic Dialogue and stuff?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method

yo dawg, why you gotta be so negative? this comment isn't adding to the conversation. keep it to yourself next time.

He is ranting whilst judiciously admitting that he doesn't understand the reasoning behind most of it (eg namespacing and port mapping.)

She. (Unless you're referring to Stan.)

I don't think this is ranting. It reads to me more like a formatted dump of someone's evaluation notes. Some stream-of-consciousness is to be expected.

It's probably not wise to post it in that case.

It's like "I bought this car and it has this engine and stuff and I have to put oil in it. I'm not sure why but why can't it just run on sunlight? And why do we need 4 wheels because I heard that bikes can travel around 2. Not exactly sure why but that must be better."

Admit I'm a Docker fanboi but I don't think you can simulateously analyse and critique something when you admit you do not understand it.

I understand that it can come off like that, but from reading the rest of her articles you can tell these kind of questions arise from sincerity and not some kind of conceited dismissal.

This kind of approach is really useful for someone coming in with zero prior knowledge of the situation - these are the exact questions you'd ask if you were oblivious to the subject. Something like "I don't understand what the Docker daemon is for" isn't meant to dismiss the daemon, but just sincerely pointing out that she doesn't understand what it's for.

I feel posting articles like this is a good way to move forward in learning something. When learning something and writing about it exposing your ignorance directly rather than posturing puts you in a good position. Less knowledgable readers know to take this point into consideration, and more knowledgable (or angry) readers may point out the errors in your statements.

Being proved wrong is a great way to learn more, as long as one can accept it without taking it personally (hence pointing out unknowns in the post). And as being proved wrong is a luxury that doesn't really exist in the programming world outside of education, exposing your views to the community is an important way to learn from others.

I love that she posts stuff like this. It's not meant to be a review of anything, it's a journal of how she learns things, and I've learnt a lot through her writings because of it. Docker is confusing and almost everything written about it is written by those who have already achieved enlightenment so to speak, instead of by those who are in the process of achieving enlightenment.

I don't think that's particularly fair on Julia. I have found her posts very useful, even the ones written in this style. Documenting her journey from newbie to proficiency is very useful to others wanting to learn the topic in question as they can relate to the questions in posts like these and see whether she found answers later on in her archive.

But these are exactly the questions that I want answered. Much too often I have people talking about certain parts of a system that are so far above my current understanding that I'm too intimidated to jump in and ask "But why <basic-design-decision>?".

I can't imagine having the nerve to tell someone not to post what they want on their own blog.

Docker is still pretty new. If you were the owner of a horse and someone was trying to sell you one of those new fangled cars you would have a bunch of questions about why exactly this car is better than your horse. And should you be going with the cheaper Ford? or one of the more expensive models?

She's not writing a critique she's asking questions about tradeoffs from the viewpoint of someone who doesn't know the answers.

I agree. The content is most definitely there and I learned a few things, but the signal-to-noise ratio is a bit high for my tastes. The "like"s and whatnot are distracting, I find.

I would humbly suggest that Julia work on her writing style. She's in a good position to do so: there's stuff to be said and now it's just a question of tweaking the manner in which it's said.

Edit: why the hate? I didn't think I was being a jerk...

She wrote a blog post, put it online for ... who knows? It could be literally any reason. For her own later reference, to help crystallize her thoughts, or just for fun. Somebody else posts it to Hacker News. Dudes (always dudes!) tell her to change her writing style. Why? Why should she? Why do they care?

Is the sexism really necessary?

>Why? Why should she? Why do they care?

In a word: constructive criticism

Again, I thought the piece was informative. I figured I'd voice my opinion in the form of suggestions, since this is a forum for such things.

Lesson learned. The only feedback one can give is positive.

>dudes, always dudes

What does sex/gender have to do with this? From your comment, it follows that you'd be less upset if women had commented. That feels wrong and regressive.