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The Need to Read

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Need to Read

#101

Post by inglor_cz »

zktrust wrote: post #100
inglor_cz wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not PG, it is your sneering and arrogant attitude that attracts downvotes. I haven't downvoted you, but if I did, it would be for the tone of your comments alone. I don't care about PG one way or another, but I am sick of the total level of glibness on the Internet, and while I gave up on mainstream social media, I would prefer HN to stay a little bit friendlier and less toxic than Twitter or Reddit.

thank you for not downvoting me. i am less arrogant than you think i am a true effective altruist. hahahahaha

You're welcome. Transmitting one's true personality across TCP/IP is harder than it looks.

Re: The Need to Read

#103

Post by chiefalchemist »

Two things come to mind:

- When you have to explain something to someone else - and you wish to do it well - you're forced to rethink, reprocess, etc. The exercise deepens your own understanding.

- Our senses (and associated neural support) are weighted to the visual. Reading plays to that strength.

Re: The Need to Read

#104

Post by bstpierre »

Hendrikto wrote: post #89
inglor_cz wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote eight books, sold about 35 000 copies (fairly huge number for Czechia with its not-quite-11 million people), and I am also a programmer. The similarities are pretty strong. In both cases, you need to express yourself so that the receiving party may understand you. That said, human readers are a lot more welcoming and friendly consumers of your written work than computers. Positive feedback from computers is b…

> Positive feedback from computers is basically nonexistent. 412 tests passed, 0 warnings, 0 errors.

I suspect this is tongue in cheek, but passing tests aren’t really the computer’s feedback. They’re feedback from Past You, who wrote the tests. The computer is just performing the tests. The tests might be incomplete or even wrong. The code might be horrendous. The computer doesn’t care.

Human feedback on the code, design, usability, appearance, documentation, etc. is all very different from passing tests.

Re: The Need to Read

#105

Post by kingkongjaffa »

I’m thinking about this more and more in the context of being a developer and product manager. I’m a knowledge worker, my unit of work is often writing, either for a computer to read or people to read.

Getting better at writing, and simply writing more is a core goal and something I struggle with.

I’m looking at different systems like evergreen notes, zettlekasten etc. and trying to incorporate those in my own note taking.

https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Evergreen_notes

Re: The Need to Read

#106

Post by kingkongjaffa »

antirez wrote: post #55

Many of us are programmers. Some of us are also trying to be writers. Trust me: writing is like programming. Reading code is very useful to become a better programmer, but you learn programming mostly by writing code. Similarly you mostly learn how to write prose by writing prose, tons of it. Reading is especially useful if you identify certain books that are very high in style (for me one of such books was "Vite di…

I write probably 30-100 emails a day, I struggle with writing longer form things.

Re: The Need to Read

#107

Post by matwood »

yourgranny wrote: post #70

Since this is a Paul Graham post, I'm gonna ask because it is the elephant in the room. Why has Hacker News been so quiet about Twitter? I think I know but I want my suspicions confirmed. I would prefer politics be kept out of Hacker News completely but the stories that don't appear seemingly lean in a single direction and it is turning me away now.

There was a lot of Twitter news early on, but Musk continuing to act like a child is old news we don't need to see here again and again. I would prefer to see another Twitter story when there is actually a story and not simply 'someone was fired/hired/let on/kicked off'.

Re: The Need to Read

#108

Post by breck »

I highly recommend the book "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer Adler. I've been rereading it every few years since it changed my life in high school (turned me into a lifelong autodidact).

Re: The Need to Read

#109

Post by slorber »

johnny_reilly wrote: post #99
personjerry wrote: post #26

It's interesting that the article's thesis is about reading, but most of the article is actually about writing . And I think that's an understated point. I myself wrote a blog piece about "Blogging as Structured Thinking" earlier this year. I think that actually plenty of people do reading in various forms of content. The real challenge is getting people to do more writing. If you want to be a thinker, you have to wr…

What Simon said! I've found that blogging hugely helps me clarify my own thinking on a topic, and flush out areas of ignorance. Another excellent option for making getting going with blogging simple is Docusaurus - makes it very easy to get up and running! https://docusaurus.io

Yes, great choice :)

Re: The Need to Read

#110

Post by amelius »

antirez wrote: post #55

Many of us are programmers. Some of us are also trying to be writers. Trust me: writing is like programming. Reading code is very useful to become a better programmer, but you learn programming mostly by writing code. Similarly you mostly learn how to write prose by writing prose, tons of it. Reading is especially useful if you identify certain books that are very high in style (for me one of such books was "Vite di…

Personally waiting for the day when you can layout your thoughts in a bulletpoint list, and GPT-3/4/5 turns it into a coherent and pleasant to read whole.
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