from Hacker News

The “Myths List” is a communication antipattern

by gjstein on 8/8/19, 7:29 PM with 35 comments

• by mikekchar on 8/8/19, 10:29 PM

  I find it slightly ironic that an article about the evils of "Myths Lists" uses the "X is an antipattern" form. Calling something an antipattern by saying that it is bad is just a "myth list" comprising one entry :-)

  The original meaning of antipattern is more than a common practice that's a bad idea. It's something that appears to be very good in a certain situation, but is actually bad. In order to document it as an antipattern, you have to describe why people think it is a good idea in the context in which they use it. Then you have to explain why those good ideas don't work out. This article fails to do this, IMHO. It's just a rant about something the author doesn't like (exactly the same as this post ;-) ).

• by Tomte on 8/8/19, 7:36 PM

  As the author of "Myths about /dev/urandom" (https://www.2uo.de/myths-about-urandom) I gingerly agree with the thrust of this article (although it has not really swayed me, other articles in that vein have).

  The essay is still this way, because (a) the title is well-known in certain circles (call it branding) and (b) it's real work to find a new structure.

• by caymanjim on 8/8/19, 9:43 PM

  Newsflash: listicles are garbage. It doesn't need to be a list of myths; any article following the pattern "10 anythings about anything" is clickbait trash.

• by gweinberg on 8/8/19, 8:43 PM

  It's generally much more helpful to say what's correct than what's wrong, if only because there are so many more ways to be wrong. Often when I see lists of "myths", the "myths" are true or close enough most of the time, and are only harmfully wrong in rare circumstances. Getting rid of a flawed but workable model without having a better one to replace it with is not an improvement.

• by mcphage on 8/8/19, 8:15 PM

  Does the author include "Falsehoods Programers Believe about $FOO" style articles? I generally find them to be clear about the fact that these are lists of false statements, especially since there's generally no content to each falsehood outside of stating it (sometimes they provide counterexamples).

• by balfirevic on 8/8/19, 9:08 PM

  Here is one of my favourite "myth list" articles: https://www.seriouseats.com/2013/06/the-food-lab-7-old-wives...

  I think the form fits great with the content. So it can work, but the myths listed have to actually be widely held and promulgated false beliefs.

• by duxup on 8/8/19, 8:35 PM

  Humans being humans love to make the myths easy to knock down so they end up being very general, and often absurd.

  The answer then ends up being just as general ("nuh uh!") and so simplistic that it is useless.

  So I guess what I'm saying is that it turns into... Twitter.

• by sampleinajar on 8/8/19, 9:05 PM

  This is very context driven. I find that myth lists with regards to health topics are helpful. They usually have links to studies and generally aim to dispel common misperceptions. They usually spur me to read more into each myth, especially if it is something I am new to. They aren't always concretely correct, but they spur investigation. However, as this article is clearly labeled "general computing" on the site, I agree that almost all articles in that category use myth lists as poorly executed opinion argument. It comes across as very juvenile. Myth: Rust is difficult to learn. Truth: Actually, Rust is quite easy to learn. Ugh...

• by lfowles on 8/8/19, 8:46 PM

  Would you go so far as to say Myths Lists Considered Harmful? :)

• by domnomnom on 8/8/19, 10:06 PM

  It's interesting to see the difference in complexity between an application in theory and examples of the actual engineering requirements. It's no different than reading Glamour magazine for makeup tips or Men's Fitness for health advice, etc. Not everyone is going to be into the same level of depth and complexity here.

  In the potential failure to recognize the intended audience of these lists, I wonder if the antipattern accusation is really an antipattern (hehe). But I honestly don't know - Were these lists intended to be used as programming guides?

• by nlawalker on 8/8/19, 8:31 PM

  I agree with this, but I think the bigger problem with "myths lists" is that they're condescending. Even when written dispassionately, they implicitly leap out of the gate with "everyone is wrong, including you, reader, and I am going to drop my wisdom on you."

  I can't find it now, but there was a great comment on a previous "falsehoods" post about how the only compelling reason to frame content this way is to get clicks and drive engagement through contention and disagreement, and that the world would simply be a better place if the tone was more in line with "here are some super interesting cases you may not have thought of when you do X". See https://xkcd.com/1053/ for a similar sentiment.

• by jfengel on 8/8/19, 9:24 PM

  Seems to me that "myths lists" are most useful for, ya know, actual "myths"[1]. If somebody is likely to google for X, they'll find your page, and read your refutation. As a matter of SEO, the closer you get to repeating the commonly-repeated story, the more likely they'll get to your page.

  If the myth isn't something common enough to be googled for, then you're just confusing people. Just state the facts, in as concise and clear a fashion as you can.

  I think people are drawn to the "myths" structure because it breaks up the page visually. It tells people, "Here is a small unit of information. You don't have to read the whole page to get a story". There are lots of other ways to indicate that: headers, lists, images. It's a correct intuition that a flat page full of paragraphs is intimidating, but there are other ways.

  [1] in the sense of "myth" as "commonly-repeated falsehood". Most falsehoods aren't myths, and a better use of "myth" means a fiction that resonates deeply and universally. Fictions aren't mere falsehoods, either.

• by robbrown451 on 8/8/19, 10:17 PM

  I use Quora a lot, which has some good stuff but at this point I admit the good stuff is far outnumbered by the bad these days.

  One of the most annoying things people do is to write posts (technically answers) that attempt to "surprise" people by telling them something they thought was true, but is in fact, not true.

  And so many of them are really convoluted and depend on weird non-standard definitions of things. Something like "technically red things are blue" or the like. (because they absorb blue light maybe? So you are defining things by what they absorb rather than what they reflect? Whuuu?) So, so many answers are like that, but maybe not to that extreme.

  Yes it is a clickbaity technique. They are always wanting to blow people's minds.

• by kdeldycke on 8/8/19, 10:13 PM

  These myths lists are definitely falsehoods programmers believe in.

• by wfbarks on 8/8/19, 10:21 PM

  but will they click?