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Write for One Person

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Re: Write for One Person

#41

Post by irishcoffee »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #11
jordwest wrote: post #9

Earlier 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...

I'm floored people told you that you had issues because of that article. I'd ignore them and forget all about it.

That was fantastic. Vaguely reminded me of: https://0x5f37642f.com/

Re: Write for One Person

#42

Post by ghaff »

zxter wrote: post #40

One thing I've noticed is that information is often either too basic or too advanced. The hardest resources to find are the ones that bridge that gap. Writing for a specific person often produces exactly that kind of explanation, which is probably why these posts end up helping so many others as well.

When I was giving presentations to fairly large groups for a larger company, the feedback forms would often include both "way too basic" and "really great insights."

Re: Write for One Person

#43

Post by maplethorpe »

embedding-shape wrote: post #17
maplethorpe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 expe…

I get where you're coming from, and I agree to some extent, but I do think our tendency to weight criticism more favorably than praise (as if praise is "chaff" and criticism is automatically valuable) can be dangerous. This negativity bias unfortunately led me to adopt less-than-optimal ways of working in my younger years, because I assumed the people offering me criticism knew what they were talking about, when this wasn't always the case.

So while criticism can be valuable, I think it's worth reflecting an equally critical eye back at the person who is offering it, as upon closer inspection they may not be worth listening to at all.

Re: Write for One Person

#44

Post by areoform »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #8
mediaman wrote: post #7

Earlier 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.

Your article, https://www.matheusmoreira.com/articles/babys-second-garbage... made me happy. :)

I read this in the voice and cadence of a D&D dungeon master reciting an epic tale,

    The dark mages often braved the underworld themselves and were therefore undaunted by the task. It should not be difficult, they thought, to adapt the machine to do it. Why couldn't it travel the foreign lands? There was no reason. And so it was decided. The machine would be taught how to do it.
    
    The resources available at the garbage collector's disposal were substantial. It had the object census. It had a list of roots which it would search for objects. It would reap all objects it didn't find in those roots.
    
    One of those roots is the lisp stack. As the program churns, values are placed in stasis and stored there so that they may be recovered later when needed. It is when they escape from this stack that they create havoc in dynamic society. But where are they escaping to?
It reminded me of this ad for a video game cosmetic. It had the same brought-a-smile-to-my-face energy. :)

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/K9mlJMVmEOY

Re: Write for One Person

#45

Post by a_bonobo »

Ah, personas!

https://bufferbuffer.com/using-personas-in-technical-writing...

>In user experience (UX) design, personas are fictional characters representing the different types of users who might use a product or service. These personas are based on user research and are designed to help designers and other stakeholders understand the needs, goals, and behaviors of the different types of users.

Re: Write for One Person

#49

Post by bblb »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #38
GarnetFloride wrote: post #6

I never try to speak to everyone as a tech writer. Tutorials are for people who'd never used our software before, but even then I could assume a certain level of computer literacy, for example they can launch out software or browse to a URL. I can make How-to's that can assume they had gone through at least one of the tutorials, but even then I put links to the appropriate tutorials so they could refresh or learn if…

I've noticed people's "computer literacy" varies dramatically based on the applicability of whatever they're trying to accomplish to their personal desires versus work. Being a bit hyperbolic: An update moves one pixel out of place in a line-of-business application and helldesk calls roll in from core-dumping end users who simply can't fathom how to use the software anymore. OTOH, big streaming video or shopping serv…

Streaming sites and shopping carts are used by millions of people, but casually after work, maybe twice a day.

LoBs are used intensively for hours on end in a busy work day, and most people's livelihoods depend on them either directly or indirectly. You grow into them. Muscle memory used to be an actual UI design goal, back when TUI's were the most common LoB interface. Not so much anymore when everything is web app and you click through the horrid UI slowly with your mouse pointer, and repeat this identical task 200 times in a day.

edit: We naturally develop a muscle memory even for the worst LoB. But they are not designed with this in mind. If they were, they wouldn't move that one critical pixel around in a mouse driven app.

Re: Write for One Person

#50

Post by monkeywork »

Syzygies wrote: post #24

I've spoken before a thousand several times saying with a straight face "Every audience is an audience of one." My first example, I was asked to give one more talk on how one needs to shuffle seven times. There were four people, and a blackboard smaller than my kitchen window. I went for it like I was in office hours, which I've always enjoyed more than teaching. A few weeks later a phone call "I liked your talk." "T…

Is there a link to the "shuffle seven times" talk?
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