You don't need to document everything

https://www.freyaindia.co.uk/p/you-dont-need-to-document-everything

by boboddy • 3 years ago

58 39 3 years ago

freyaindia.co.uk

davidmurdoch• 3 years ago

Quite the "get off my lawn" moment the author is having here.

wredue• 3 years ago

Meh.

It happened once, and then I bought a little tripod mount thing and now I get my video and get to watch. Problem solved.

Granted, HN is the only “social” media I have.

satisfice2• 3 years ago

She says nothing about requirements and test cases.

kelseyfrog• 3 years ago

Any insight into the requirements and test cases for "health scares to mental breakdowns to their first time seeing a baby after it’s born"?

satisfice2• 2 years ago

Boy, Hacker News is a tough crowd to tell a joke to. I will keep trying, though.

prepend3• 3 years ago

I like storing photos on Facebook so it will remind of the memory on later years on the same day. It’s nice and many times I’ve completely forgotten the event until I see the reminder and photo. It’s gotten to the point where I’ll post photos and restrict access to only me.

I also think experiencing things and being there is important but it’s hard to know everyone’s motivations and this piece seems to assume everyone is like the author.

Human memory is fickle and things I thought I would always remember, I forget. So having photos and notes are important to spark memories and improve my well-being, at least for me.

charles_f• 3 years ago

You can do that with Immich or OneDrive, your photos don't have to be public

bluGill• 3 years ago

Facebook photos are not public, at least not by default. They are easily shared with your real friends and family - the type of people who actually want to see pictures of your kids (not strangers who don't are).

Unfortunately for humans/facebook, the useful parts don't keep people on and scrolling past ads and so and and so Facebook as changed to be shared memes and others such things that nobody cares about - but it keeps you scrolling. However they still support the share a picture of the kids with only the people who care about that.

prepend3• 3 years ago

I can do it myself with scripts and stuff. Facebook is just the easiest for me.

But my point is that I like taking pictures of events and it enhances my experience. It’s not the particular way I remind myself. I suppose it would also work if I printed them and put them in a shoebox.

radlad• 3 years ago

I think Google Photos, Apple Photos, and Amazon Photos all have features to re-surface photos / memories.

prepend3• 3 years ago

They do, but I don’t typically log into those every day and don’t want to enable push alerts.

There are lots of explicit services that do this, but I like the passive aspect of them just being available in my Facebook feed so I don’t have to check every day to see if I have something.

nickthegreek• 3 years ago

I appreciate my Google hubs with Google photo backgrounds. It really great to see old memories pop up when I check the time.

felideon• 3 years ago

Here I thought it would be an opinion piece on how code doesn’t need documentation.

swatward• 3 years ago

Yes, I wanted to read something about how to make code or tools more intuitive, not a reminder of how badly our minds have been poisoned by this new era of media.

naitgacem• 3 years ago

Glad I usually read a few comments before the linked article :P

ukuina• 3 years ago

This is why I built HackYourNews.com!

zubairq• 3 years ago

I agree that we should experience things. Sometimes I take one photo to remind me of the event and then I put my phone away

zikzak• 3 years ago

When I was a kid my father, knowing I was obsessed with the Appalachian Trail, took me there from our home in a non-mountainous part of Canada for a few days backpacking in a section of the trail in New Hampshire.

On the top of a mountain we took some photos of the amazing view with the camera my father used for his work in insurance (so not great, but not bad) and got the film developed a few weeks later.

I realize the camera and our skill were probably to blame but the huge gap between the photos and the reality made me a person who treasures the experience more than the document. I am like you, I take a photo or two as a reminder but try to spend the majority of my time taking things in.

batch12• 3 years ago

I've been wishing I had better documentation of earlier experiences and have started building a personal store for this. Sort of like an external memory palace since I can't seem to make my meat brain comply. Sometimes I just need a pointer to that memory to retrieve them and these pictures and documents help. Need? No. Will it make me happy? Maybe not. Interesting? I think so.

csdvrx• 3 years ago

I absolutely love this take! My personal quirk is to be "phone free": I don't carry a cellphone. I have one, but it stays at home, plugged in. I only take it with me if I have to take a flight. On most days I only carry a Moaan ebook reader (the size of a phone) or a Bigme (the size of a tablet).

No phone is nice for concentration (reading a book), but the lack of distraction goes both ways: no notifications/email or apps to waste my time, and also no possibility to take a picture to waste my consciousness of what's happening!

I think the lack of pictures make me experience the moment more, with my eyes: I can always check the pictures other people will have taken on their feeds, later. For something like a new year countdown, there'll be multiple versions available.

Aloha• 3 years ago

I think oversharing is an actual societal issue, people spend lots of energy trying to create an outwardly perfect narrative to share with friends, family and random strangers.

It's just so much mental energy to do so, and it harms (in the most vague use of this word) others, because they too think their life must be just as perfect as well.

dirtyhippiefree• 3 years ago

Documenting one’s life so the digital forensics people have something to look at…sign of the times…

hyperific2• 3 years ago

Older generations get swept up in this need to document everything too. My mom, for example, recorded me sobbing and holding my dog as she was being put down last year.

nefarious_ends• 3 years ago

uh maybe this is something for your therapist and not HN..

hyperific2• 3 years ago

Point I'm trying to make is that it's a phenomenon not limited to influencers and Gen Z. Even older generations seek validation by posting life experiences online, at the cost of being present for those experiences.

tommiegannert3• 3 years ago

Every time I stand in some photoesque place, I think "there are probably already thousands of photos better staged than mine will ever be."

I end up only taking photos of things like a spectacularly nice knot on a rope, the fire escape plan (hotel layout), what I had for dinner, or other stuff that'll be difficult to find online. Though I rarely look back at those, a strong motivator is regret minimzation, since I'll probably only visit once.

I can only speculate what the world will be like in a hundred years, when all corners of Earth have been photographed, and on constant display. I'm sure the tourism industry has to be... shrunk... anyway, for multiple reasons: at least 1) unnecessary energy usage and (2) global invasive mixing of ecosystems way too fast for them to handle it gracefully. A sea of photographies will make that easier.

Arainach• 3 years ago

Photos and art don't have to be unique to be good or valuable. No one learns by only doing new things - what would happen if someone refused to write a hello world program or a database or whatever because it had already been done?

I agree with the overall article sentiment that it is important to take in experiences rather than stand around taking photos you will never actually look back at, but "it's been done better, I shouldn't do this" is a mindset which will hold you back.

tommiegannert3• 3 years ago

You're totally right about me having a "if it's done before, it's boring" and you're also right it's probably hold me back. I don't recommend anyone have that feeling, but that's how I'm wired.

gumby3• 3 years ago

Every time I stand in some photoesque place, I think "there are probably already thousands of photos better staged than mine will ever be."

Also 100% when I travel: when I see some amazing piece in a museum I know if I want to see it again (especially in great detail) I can, without taking my own photo over the heads of others. Instead I can just enjoy it.

A couple of decades ago I scanned my dad’s slides. There were some fun pictures of old familiar places in the 60s (Singapore was really muddy!) but basically the only pictures of interest to anyone were of people. Lots of fun hours since then pointing at random photos and saying “remember when we did that?” But those landscapes? Boring (my dad said “These remind me how fascinated I was by the leaves when we visited the US” — basically thousands of (expensive!) photos were worth a 10 second glance in total).

Video is also different from a photo — you can participate or watch but not both. At least you can whip your phone out, snap something interesting, and go back to being part of it.

tommiegannert3• 3 years ago

Video is also different from a photo

Third-person with a selfie stick from behind is the ultimate solution for all our memorial needs. Though that doesn't capture our facial reactions. Need two cameras. At least. :)

jpl56• 3 years ago

In museums I do a first visit enjoying the place and the pieces of art. Then I do a second visit just to take pictures of what gave me more emotions (keeping the art and its label), so that I can watch them back, or just know I have them saved somewhere.

Some people may think "who is this weird guy taking pictures but not enjoying the place"...

And I enjoy a lot museums where pictures aren't allowed, there are no irritating shutter sound effects that are so easy to avoid, just by putting the phone on vibrate.

JKCalhoun• 3 years ago

When I look back at photos of road trips I gravitate to the ones where the kids are in the photo — they were so little then.

So, yes, for me it's the ephemeral subjects one should capture. That the camera tends to come out when said subjects are standing in front of the Grand Canyon is just a reality.

gumby3• 3 years ago

I would consider this from the opposite stance: why are we looking? The article is a rant against a pathology and I agree with it, I do believe there’s a positive aspect too. Perhaps we just see the annoying consequences when we’re in the real world.

When I see a bunch of kids at a table in a restaurant yes, they have their phones out, but the way it looks to me is their convo diffusely and casually involves more than the five or six people at the table (“hey look Joe has a broken arm!” “It’s Judy’s birthday during the week so we had the restaurant bring her a special dessert and she’s embarrassed” “Hey Joe, Alice broke the same arm, look!”). More messaging than posting, and part of the dinner, not supplanting it. Mostly the kids are talking with each other. I think that’s great. (Note, in my case kids 16-25).

I get the feeling that these interactions don’t increase Dunbar’s number but make the links slightly deeper.

The influencers and social media posting are, IMHO, froth that will subside.

Personally I don’t do a lot of social media and would do almost none if my partner weren’t annoyed that I wasn’t up to date with what is happening with some friends. I do post a bit on FB (guess my age!) but only when something non routine happens. But I do value FB because it helps me catch up / stay up to date with what my friends and their kids are doing, all around the world. A friend lost her husband and it wasn’t an extreme event like the awful ones described in the article, just her blowing off a bit of steam (and grief) as his illness proceeded. Healthy for her and you know, good for those of us who loosely interacted along the way.

jddj• 3 years ago

I think I've commented this before, but Bo Burnham:

"I was sort of raised in America when it was a cult of self-expression, and I was just taught, you know: express myself and have things to say and everyone will care about them. And I think everyone was taught that, and most of us found out that no one gives a shit what we think...They say it’s the ‘me’ generation. It’s not. The arrogance is taught or it was cultivated.

It’s self-conscious. That’s what it is, it’s conscious of self. Social media is just the market’s answer to a generation that demanded to perform, so the market said “Here, perform everything, to each other, all the time for no other reason.” It’s prison, it’s horrific. It’s performer and audience melded together.

What do we want more than to lie in bed at the end of the day and just watch our lives as a satisfied audience member? I know very little about anything, but I do know this: that if you can live your life without an audience, you should do it"

cafard• 3 years ago

Tom Wolfe popularized the expression "the Me Generation" a dozen or fifteen years before Bo Burnham was born. I read his essay at about that time, but have no idea at all whether he was talking about anything like this.

qwertygnu• 3 years ago

While this problem is growing for younger people, there are still many many many people who live reasonable non-scoial-media-driven lives. You probably just won't hear about them because...they don't promote themselves on social media. Social media both purposefully by the companies, but also by the nature of the content, depicts a world where everyone is on it. Everyone is doing this new trend, or is aware of this new meme, or has heard about this drama. It's toxic, it gives you FOMO to even think about stopping. It's messed up. It's sad to see it in my friends and family.

kkfx• 3 years ago

Few notes:

- I do tend to document much BUT not to publish my personal docs to the world, so well, I'm not selling much for free;

- while I tend to document I find a curious issues, maybe mine, maybe common: on one side I fail to proper document anything: I start baldly to document something but quickly decline and fail completing the docs, integrate it with the others and properly keep anything up to date, conversely while I have even too much text written on various stuff I fail to have something like a simple "my home siteguide for my family", subtitle: "If/when incapacitated my dear you can find here all infos too keep the home up and running";

- for literate programming personal stuff it's the same: I tend to start in org-mode with much prose and an outline of anything, but many times I end up abandoning the literate approach to write code directly that a certain point in time I go back splitting the now working and complete enough code in the original org-mode structure, who generally get revised a bit. Than a plateau until something break and the game restart.

Long story short:

- documenting does not means showing anything to anyone on a personal website, it can perfectly be just for few people in private;

- documenting and keeping thin up to date probably demand a not so common discipline and maybe that's why in most places there are a more or less big pile of document crap and little usable, up to date and easy to use documentation.

You don't need to document everything

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