> Often this person is me I wrote an article that never fails to put a smile on my face every time I read it. I felt like I had finally found my own voice. Ran it through Claude and it told me to tone it down a bit, but I ignored the advice and published it anyway. The article caused people on HN to say I had issues. They weren't exactly wrong, but still. Be careful with what you publish out there. Warm reception is…
Would you be willing to share it again here? I love reading these personal things - especially the things that people publish in spite of being told they're crazy. In my experience they're usually the more real, honest and raw things in a crazy world where everyone is keeping up appearances and pretending to be normal and sane
Write for One Person
11–20 of 82 posts
Re: Write for One Person
#12> Often this person is me I wrote an article that never fails to put a smile on my face every time I read it. I felt like I had finally found my own voice. Ran it through Claude and it told me to tone it down a bit, but I ignored the advice and published it anyway. The article caused people on HN to say I had issues. They weren't exactly wrong, but still. Be careful with what you publish out there. Warm reception is…
One time a project I made appeared at the very top of the front page. It attracted many negative comments. Some saying it was barely usable. Others saying I'd built it wrong, and offering half-baked advice on how I should have done it instead. That project later went on to get me lots of work and recognition, and even won me a few industry awards.
HN posters tend to be overly critical, often tripping over themselves to demonstrate how they're smarter than the creator of whatever it is they're commenting on. In my experience, they rarely are.
Re: Write for One Person
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't stand it when LLMs tell you to tone it down. Their writing advice is almost universally awful. They want you to write the most cliched bland content possible. Sometimes I see technical people who feel they aren't good writers, but who have good ideas. They then turn to LLMs, believing that the LLM will help them express their good ideas. They're often right that they have good ideas. But the LLM just turns th…
I don't know. Maybe you'll feel differently if you read my article. It's about conservative garbage collection, but I mythologized it as a story about people escaping the clutches of an orwellian surveillance machine created by technological wizards, until they learn the magical incantations required to find them. Let's just say I definitely toned it down a bit in my next article.
I just read your article, and please don’t listen to the machines!!! It’s a very fun read, and I for one love some personality in an otherwise dry topic.
The thing about keeping your personality in your writing is that you will have to be prepared for it to rub some people the wrong way, even while some people (like me) like it much better: the only writing that no one dislikes is writing that no one likes, either.
Anyway, fight the corporate blandness, have fun in your writing, and keep it out there! That at least is my opinion.
PS if you add RSS I would gladly add your blog to my feed, based on this article.
Re: Write for One Person
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know. Maybe you'll feel differently if you read my article. It's about conservative garbage collection, but I mythologized it as a story about people escaping the clutches of an orwellian surveillance machine created by technological wizards, until they learn the magical incantations required to find them. Let's just say I definitely toned it down a bit in my next article.
I just read your article, and please don’t listen to the machines!!! It’s a very fun read, and I for one love some personality in an otherwise dry topic. The thing about keeping your personality in your writing is that you will have to be prepared for it to rub some people the wrong way, even while some people (like me) like it much better: the only writing that no one dislikes is writing that no one likes, either. A…
That means a lot, thanks.
I do have RSS and Atom.
https://www.matheusmoreira.com/rss.xml
https://www.matheusmoreira.com/atom.xml
Please let me know if it doesn't work, I'll fix it.
Re: Write for One Person
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just read your article, and please don’t listen to the machines!!! It’s a very fun read, and I for one love some personality in an otherwise dry topic. The thing about keeping your personality in your writing is that you will have to be prepared for it to rub some people the wrong way, even while some people (like me) like it much better: the only writing that no one dislikes is writing that no one likes, either. A…
That means a lot, thanks. I do have RSS and Atom. https://www.matheusmoreira.com/rss.xml https://www.matheusmoreira.com/atom.xml Please let me know if it doesn't work, I'll fix it.
Thanks for the links, added! The bit at the end with the assembly put me in mind of another favorite post, aphyr’s hexing the tech interview: https://aphyr.com/posts/341-hexing-the-technical-interview
Re: Write for One Person
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you be willing to share it again here? I love reading these personal things - especially the things that people publish in spite of being told they're crazy. In my experience they're usually the more real, honest and raw things in a crazy world where everyone is keeping up appearances and pretending to be normal and sane
Sure thing. https://www.matheusmoreira.com/articles/babys-second-garbage...
Haha this is excellent, I believe you’ve just invented a new genre - Garbage Collector fanfiction.
I have no idea how reading this people would jump to the conclusion that you have problems, but I will jump to the conclusion that those people probably like to live in a gray box with blank walls
Re: Write for One Person
#17> Often this person is me I wrote an article that never fails to put a smile on my face every time I read it. I felt like I had finally found my own voice. Ran it through Claude and it told me to tone it down a bit, but I ignored the advice and published it anyway. The article caused people on HN to say I had issues. They weren't exactly wrong, but still. Be careful with what you publish out there. Warm reception is…
One time a project I made appeared at the very top of the front page. It attracted many negative comments. Some saying it was barely usable. Others saying I'd built it wrong, and offering half-baked advice on how I should have done it instead. That project later went on to get me lots of work and recognition, and even won me a few industry awards. HN posters tend to be overly critical, often tripping over themselves…
> HN posters tend to be overly critical, often tripping over themselves to demonstrate
That's the helpful part though, as one of the only communities that is overly critical instead of too much on the other end of the spectrum like every other community. Criticism helps you refine and sometimes even see new perspectives, and the other chaff and useless comments you can just ignore, doesn't really matter, as your experience shows as well. Ultimately I think you get back what you put into the HN-machine.
I do agree LLMs water down human writings to a extreme degree and people should just wholesale avoid them except for very surface-level copy-editing fixes, like spelling mistakes. Don't ask for their feedback how something feels or if it's "dumb" or whatever, use your own intuition.
Re: Write for One Person
#18Seriously! Every music theory blog post and video is like this. They're going to explain something like modes or maybe altered dominant scales, and they start out explaining intervals. Seriously stop, not from the beginning again! That's not your audience.
Re: Write for One Person
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
That means a lot, thanks. I do have RSS and Atom. https://www.matheusmoreira.com/rss.xml https://www.matheusmoreira.com/atom.xml Please let me know if it doesn't work, I'll fix it.
Thanks for the links, added! The bit at the end with the assembly put me in mind of another favorite post, aphyr’s hexing the tech interview: https://aphyr.com/posts/341-hexing-the-technical-interview
This is an amazing article, thank you so much for posting this!!
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(->> [0xca 0xfe 0xba 0xbe
> “Magic numbers.” You are, after all, a witch. “Every class begins with a babe, in a cafe.”
> “What?”
I love it.
Re: Write for One Person
#20> Often this person is me I wrote an article that never fails to put a smile on my face every time I read it. I felt like I had finally found my own voice. Ran it through Claude and it told me to tone it down a bit, but I ignored the advice and published it anyway. The article caused people on HN to say I had issues. They weren't exactly wrong, but still. Be careful with what you publish out there. Warm reception is…
I can't stand it when LLMs tell you to tone it down. Their writing advice is almost universally awful. They want you to write the most cliched bland content possible. Sometimes I see technical people who feel they aren't good writers, but who have good ideas. They then turn to LLMs, believing that the LLM will help them express their good ideas. They're often right that they have good ideas. But the LLM just turns th…
I feel like LLMs kind of speak to making things be average. For half the population that is a step up, but for the other half that is a step down.