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Controversial point, but PGs writing is F-. It seems a lot of effort goes into sounding smart, rather then delivering information required. Who learned anything from above?
Controversial point, but PGs writing is F-. It seems a lot of effort goes into sounding smart, rather then delivering information required. Who learned anything from above?
Didn't pg also have an essay on what an essay is and came to the conclusion that an essay is meant to explore a topic for oneself? But could also be that I read this somewhere else.
So, an essay is for the writer to explore stuff and have interested readers go along.
But useful writing is for the reader only. If pg had cut this essay to less than 500 words (and I bet this could've been done without losing information), it'd been a lot more useful, although probably not an "essay" anymore.
I'll say it again, it's a piece of writing that wouldn't warrant any attention if it weren't for the author's status here. I'm halfway through and my brain is stunned by the effort of forcing it down. PG needs a break from writing for a while. I enjoyed his early stuff and I hope he gets a return to form. [edit: it's like he's the George Lucas of writing useful articles for hackers: the early ones were classics but h…
Glad I'm not the only one. First few paragraphs lead to a good buildup but going on it fell apart. Further, It's hard to criticise Graham on HN.
I'll say it again, it's a piece of writing that wouldn't warrant any attention if it weren't for the author's status here. I'm halfway through and my brain is stunned by the effort of forcing it down. PG needs a break from writing for a while. I enjoyed his early stuff and I hope he gets a return to form. [edit: it's like he's the George Lucas of writing useful articles for hackers: the early ones were classics but h…
I'll say it again, it's a piece of writing that wouldn't warrant any attention if it weren't for the author's status here. I'm halfway through and my brain is stunned by the effort of forcing it down. PG needs a break from writing for a while. I enjoyed his early stuff and I hope he gets a return to form. [edit: it's like he's the George Lucas of writing useful articles for hackers: the early ones were classics but h…
Glad I'm not the only one. First few paragraphs lead to a good buildup but going on it fell apart. Further, It's hard to criticise Graham on HN.
How is this useful? How do I say things that are true,novel,important. Oh well, only say things that you're sure they're 'worth hearing' - where presumably, worth hearing is defined as being true, novel and important.
This seems like quite a solipsistic view of essay writing. If everyone knew how useful their writing was before anyone else read it then the problem he's describing wouldn't exist. No one would choose to publish bad things - the problem is people publish bad things because they don't know they're bad until other people have pointed out why.
All this is really doing is arguing for a bias against publishing - have a high threshold, as a result lots of good ideas will go unpublished, but the few that do get published will make you look good. Is that actually a good solution to provide the most value to the people reading, or is that a good solution to maintain your reputation?
The topic of useful writing is important. The ideas in this essay may not be surprising or unexpected, but the author does lay out a clear formula (importance + novelty + correctness + strength) that probably isn't obvious to most. It seems to be correct and the concrete list of usefulness criteria is strong. Everything seems to check out. The focus on correctness in this style of essay writing seems like a function…
>the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer.
Sometimes saying something wrong, may actually be more useful. Either because you're clarifying a problem or making a connection or drawing a contrast or showing someone else the path by letting them see your chain of logic.
But perhaps a simplistic initial draft is not the same thing as a badly written, incorrect one.
The other day I was helping friend with an essay and i realized how 12 years in software programming has changed my writing style. Now it seems very awkward to think and write in long paragraphs. It feels more natural to use bullet points for everything.
Mind you once I have that down I can churn out improbable amounts of text in a relatively short amount of time. The main challenge for me is to stop writing and remove unnecessary text, which is kinda hard to do given how much nuance is in code.
I mean I've been thinking of writing a post (and a knowledge sharing session with my mostly C writing, older generation developer colleagues) about modern development and I was already thinking of painting a picture of how things were 10+ years ago.
While the Internet provides a platform for Essays, as he says, I think maybe a bigger point is it allowing the rise of 'Video Essays'. Where now content creators are turning out 30+ minute videos on a single subject. While in the past it used to be more 'dry' things like History and the like it seems more mainstream subjects are being covered. Movies, cars, current social issues, etc. And just how much you actually g…