Write Simply

If the blog post is about programming and it adopts a didactic style, i.e., telling the reader what to do, and it is obviously based on personal preferences -- either the author's or someone else's -- I react the same way. To me, these writings are only opinions.

The internet is absolutely loaded with programmers offering opinions or repeating the opinions of others but framing them as directives. Do this or don't do that. Or the more subtle: I like X and and you should, too. These authors can be argumentative if the opinions are challenged, as if one was disobeying a directive, or contradicting a fact, instead of disagreeing with an individual or group opinion.

(you) > There is basically no argumentation happening here and most statements are just thrown out as truths. Yes, it might be quick and easy to read through, but it's not very good writing.

After reading this I would expect a solid argument from you that "it's not very good writing" because "There is basically no argumentation happening" and "most statements are just thrown out as truths".

(you) > Notice how he's arguing against

So... is argumentation happening or not?

(pg) > When you write in a fancy way to impress people, you're making them do extra work just so you can seem cool.

(you) > Notice how he's arguing against "write in a fancy way to impress people" and not "write in a fancy way".

He is definitely taking for granted here that everyone who is writing in a "fancy way" is doing so to impress people. At the very least, he seems to be suggesting that this is often the case. There is no question whatsoever though, that this is happening at least some of the time.

(you) > Most authors write in a "fancy" way to invoke a feeling in the reader. They don't add random words to "seem cool"

"Most"? According to what? Do you have anything more to support this assertion than he had to support his? Are you really in a position to be critiquing him about this?

(pg) > It's too much to hope that writing could ever be pure ideas. You might not even want it to be. But for most writers, most of the time, that's the goal to aim for. The gap between most writing and pure ideas is not filled with poetry.

(you) > What is evening happening in this paragraph? First he's questioning whether it's possible for "writing to ever be pure ideas" without explaining what that's even supposed to mean.

There's a fair amount of implicit logic here, but i'd say the general idea is something along the lines of:

  - The purpose of writing (for "most writers, most of the time") is to communicate ideas.
  - Care ought to be taken in preventing the medium (text) from inhibiting this communication.
  - Simple writing can be understood by a more broad audience
  - Therefore, simple writing will help these writers towards their end of communicating these ideas to a broader audience

(you) > Then he says that most people aim for that.

No, he said "for most writers, most of the time, that's the goal to aim for". He is saying that they ought to be aiming for that. If they already were doing so, then it would go without saying.

(you) > And somehow the solution is "not filled with poetry"

Again, I think you are misunderstanding what he is trying to say. Building on my previous explanation, I'd say he is contrasting his ideal of simple writing with poetry, which is often cryptic.

Circling back to my initial statement, I'd suggest you worry about your own arguments before criticizing those of others.

Of course you should write simply. But of course, the context matters. For example, when writing mathematical texts, somehow being able to convey pure ideas is the ideal. Poetry is not needed in that context, it is confusing, as the beauty is in the ideas conveyed, not in the words used to convey it. In such a context, for example using the expression "vector space" counts as writing simply, while in a general context it does not.

PG is complaining about most complicated writing, which is not beautiful. It uses too many words and the wrong words, like "purchase" instead of "buy" and "utilize" instead of "use". It has complex phrases that add nothing. Github's blog post about fixing a security weakness [0] is a recent example:

"On the evening of March 8, we invalidated all authenticated sessions on GitHub.com created prior to 12:03 UTC on March 8 out of an abundance of caution to protect users from an extremely rare, but potentially serious, security vulnerability affecting a very small number of GitHub.com sessions."

"Out of an abundance of caution" adds only the smell of a desperate attempt to reassure the reader. The sentence would be much better without it.

I like rich language where it is useful or fitting but, usually, I only want to know what the writer is communicating.

Hmm. You may be right.

> avoid having words that start with the same letter in the same sentence.

I remember when I was a teenager I used to get frustrated that English words had so many homophones and overlaps and synonyms. I thought why can't every concept and idea have its own distinct word? Why would we clutter up the language with fuzzy overlaps, overloaded terms, and the need to disambiguate so frequently? The disambiguation melts away with experience as you begin to sharpen your contextual locating skills. But I recall at one point I realized that one of the great things that is afforded by the language is that you have slack for adding phonetic variation to your sentences and they, for lack of a better word, sound less dumb. When something is repeated too much in a sentence or paragraph somehow it affords less clarity, and comes off childlike in some way. There's something about it that you can't quite twist out another facet on a subject through plain repetition. I never matured that idea any further, but it seemed like a fascinating insight into the operational workings of English.