Comment on Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
developers want to read documentation
they won’t look at any white papers
?!?!?!?!!
White papers are shit written by marketing people who try to make their little ad sound like something academic. In truth these white papers are in equal parts misunderstandings, wrong and full of useless fluff. They are AI slop, often completely without any AI involvement.
If someone is serious about the content, they call it a documentation, reference or datasheet.
There are both
But product whitepapers are ads
Those aren’t white papers. They are scientific papers.
White papers are written by companies as a marketing tool. The first two papers you linked above are written by universities and the last one by a research-focussed non-profit.
As per Wikipedia:
Since the 1990s, this type of document has proliferated in business. Today, a business-to-business (B2B) white paper falls under grey literature, more akin to a marketing presentation meant to persuade customers and partners, and promote a certain product or viewpoint.
While I’m not saying they don’t both exist, there are plenty of people writing the original definition for tech products, too.
And I’d argue that purely scientific papers are often written to promote products and viewpoints, too.
ulterno@programming.dev 6 months ago
Yeah, when I first got a link to a whitepaper in the newsletter, I expected it to be a… a whitepaper (I read the meaning it had back then).
After reading it properly, as if I would an academic paper, I thought it was weird that I didn’t feel like I learnt anything useful.
It would take a while (and a few other whitepapers) for me to realise what it had become.