I will never not find it insane that in college they have word minimums for essays, instead of maximums. Imo going to college ruins many people's ability to write clearly.
Why?
10 years of writing a blog nobody reads
91–100 of 188 posts
Re: 10 years of writing a blog nobody reads
#92I am not so sure about the "keep all that pondering to yourself buddy" point. The world would be a better place with a little more epistemic humility.
Re: 10 years of writing a blog nobody reads
#93> My goal now is to use less words to convey an idea. Everyone's interpretation of words is different, so using more precise language will just muddle your ideas. What?
It's easy to lose yourself in a sentence if it's not clearly thought out. Something about talking more to mask ones ignorance, or something like that. Forcing yourself to use short sentences a la simple English snaps you out of that.
Re: 10 years of writing a blog nobody reads
#94> My style has certainly improved since my early days of writing. Reading my old stuff is painful.
I've been blogging since 2006 and I feel the same way. The past few years I blog less, but I do try to write more to the point and use less idioms and spoken writing style.
Re: 10 years of writing a blog nobody reads
#95Writing a blog is like talking in the town square. Except because it’s digital, we seem to forget how communication works. If you just start talking in the town square, you’re standing alone talking. Sure a person who passes by might pause, but the odds you’re saying something really relevant to them are low, so they’ll move on. The whole question of how you get in front of the right people and tweak your message bas…
Related, I think people have stopped.... reacting on the internet? I've been part of the X/Twitter to Bluesky migration and people often mention how 'quiet' Bluesky is. I think that's not due to algorithmic intervention of product design etc., I think people are just tired. The novelty of shouting at strangers on the internet has worn off - how many internet fights have we gotten into that did nothing in the end exce…
I wonder if it's just creeping apathy, post-covid, current-AI boom. That we're just tired in life. There's a psych study, Dimensional Apathy Scale (DAS)[0] and one of the questions is basically "How much do I contact my friends?" I think it argues that the more apathy we feel, the less likely we are to reach out to others, and I imagine, the less likely we are to react or reply to comments (or even post).
I'm curious if the decline in reacting is matched by a decline in replying and posting in general.
Anyways, I worry that apathy is on the rise as we get overwhelmed with the rate of change and uncertainty in the 2020s and I'm working pretty hard to fight that apathy and bring more empathy, so if you're interested, please reach out to me the contact info in my bio.
[0]: https://das.psy.ed.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SelfDAS....
Re: 10 years of writing a blog nobody reads
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
It has nothing to do with literacy, the em-dash simply is not on the standard US QWERTY keyboard. This means that people who purposefully use it, either have to copy-paste it from somewhere or (if they-re on Windows), use "Alt + 0 1 5 1". This is very obviously not a natural behaviour that 'literate' people use when they write.
Many (most?) WYSIWYG editors automatically convert two hyphens (--) to em dash, no need to specifically look out for it.
People aren't likely to pre-type their HN and reddit comments in a word processor though, so when you see them on such sites, it's a good indication that the comment came from an LLM and not a genuine person.
Re: 10 years of writing a blog nobody reads
#97I will never not find it insane that in college they have word minimums for essays, instead of maximums. Imo going to college ruins many people's ability to write clearly.
I definitely had classes in college that had maximums as well (often assignments were supposed to be 7-10 pages, for example), but generally it's unnecessary and most people struggle to meet the minimums.
Re: 10 years of writing a blog nobody reads
#98blogs made sense before social media.
good times.
Re: 10 years of writing a blog nobody reads
#99One of the tough pills I and probably many other developers have had to swallow when maturing is that "non-programming skills" from schools are useful and very valuable, actually. Writing is one of them. Everyone loves a programmer that can explain themselves. An opinion isn't worth having if you aren't able to defend it either. Maintaining a blog therefore seems like a great way of improving your writing skills while also testing your own opinions.
Writing down opinions on things have done wonders for my ability to reason about them, especially when the opinions are built on 10 years of "hunch" and no discussion.
Re: 10 years of writing a blog nobody reads
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ha ha, now labeled as old — when on a typewriter it was common to use two dashes as a fake em dash.
I don't know when the phrase "em dash" got popular. It was probably due to web development, because, unless you were into typesetting, nobody knew what "em" was. We always just called them dashes--two hyphens make a dash.
Typographical fun fact: An em-dash is approximately the width of the letter "M", and an en-dash is the width of a lowercase n!
The latter is barely used, but is the right way to indicate dates like 2023-25.
The more you know!