I read this entire post and all the comments this disproving the Miller principle
This principle applies to the following: - User documentation - Specifications - Code comments - Any text on a user interface - Any email longer than one line Not blog posts or comments. Ironic
The Miller Principle (2007)
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Re: The Miller Principle (2007)
#22Re: The Miller Principle (2007)
#23It's one of the main things I learned when working as tech support and I talked with users all day. Nobody reads anything.
Re: The Miller Principle (2007)
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
This principle applies to the following: - User documentation - Specifications - Code comments - Any text on a user interface - Any email longer than one line Not blog posts or comments. Ironic
Damn, I guess I didn't read it closely enough
So if the read of the Miller principle is interpreted as read+understanding (it should) an interesting deeper discussion can happen.
It can be invoked with a way more dramatic "None understands anything"
Re: The Miller Principle (2007)
#25..and emails
Re: The Miller Principle (2007)
#26Re: The Miller Principle (2007)
#27I think this is more true now than ever. Before LLMs, when someone came up with an ADR/RFC/etc you had to read it because you had to approve it or reject it. People were putting effort and, yeah, you could use them in your next perf. review to gain extra points. You could easily distinguish well written docs from the crap (that also made the job of reviewing them easie) Nowadays everyone can generate a 20-page RFC/AD…
Re: The Miller Principle (2007)
#28Re: The Miller Principle (2007)
#29Anyway, this is just projection. The Miller principle really should be "Miller doesn't read anything". I read plenty.
Re: The Miller Principle (2007)
#30I think this is more true now than ever. Before LLMs, when someone came up with an ADR/RFC/etc you had to read it because you had to approve it or reject it. People were putting effort and, yeah, you could use them in your next perf. review to gain extra points. You could easily distinguish well written docs from the crap (that also made the job of reviewing them easie) Nowadays everyone can generate a 20-page RFC/AD…
As a counterexample, thanks to LLMs many long-form articles that get posted with clickbaity (but devoid of content) headlines that I would have ignored otherwise now get "read" (albeit indirectly, with the prompt "Summarize the insights of the article $ARTICLE_URL in an academic, dry, technical and information-dense way")