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 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>?".
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.
