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Write for One Person

wizardzines.com

61–70 of 82 posts

Re: Write for One Person

#61
There used to be a thing for addressing user interfaces to fake users with a profile. One talk on this for airline seat back entertainment systems had target users "Cletus", some old guy who just wants to watch movies, "Tim", a kid who wants to play games, etc. The speaker goes on and on about simplifying the UI for Cletus. I asked "Why not just give him a channel selector knob." There was a bit of stuttering, and then the speaker admits that this thing has a payment gateway and you have to pay to watch movies. So there's a complicated credit card entry UI.

Oh.

Re: Write for One Person

#62

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…

> It's kinda like people complaining about Space Launch System, why aren't we using Saturn V or an improved version of it. We have the blueprints and schematics and everything but it appears there's a gap between what's written down there and what's in the textbooks. A lot of in-between experience has evaporated because shop classes and manufacturing were shut down. Because it was designed to be manufactured using 19…

> > It's kinda like people complaining about Space Launch System, why aren't we using Saturn V or an improved version of it.

Because the SLS uses left over Space Shuttle engines. Once.

The Space-X approach is to use 33 Raptor engines.

Re: Write for One Person

#64

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…

Great story. Thank you.

Re: Write for One Person

#66
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To imagine a big audience as just 1 person sounds cool, but when I imagine the talks I need to give to a bigger audience, I find it very daunting. I can only hope that I overcome it soon.

I am late 50s and I still find talks overwhelming. What has worked though is 1. Recordings. Go into zoom, and give a talk with recording on. Listen to yourself, just once per recording but more if you can tolerate your voice :) It shows you your common failure points in black and white so that you can work on them. 2. Presenter notes. During my final talk, I have succeeded when speaking without notes, but to get ther…

This is incredible advice across the board. Would you consider writing this somewhere and submitting it as a post? I think this is valuable and worth repeating.

Re: Write for One Person

#67
I've always written my blog for myself. I keep it as a record of what I'm working on, I suppose, or what I'm interested in. I was mildly surprise to find I had 279 blog posts on https://tech.stonecharioteer.com. I only ever write for myself. Whenever I try to write for an audience, I am not satisfied.

Re: Write for One Person

#68
I write mostly for myself. That's a trite I guess observation considering that I happen to write a lot of private notes. But I think writing for broadcasting is overrated.

Journaling or diarying is writing for myself, and often in a form that will never leave the disk inside the the computer. But I also want to write more complicated things than just what I thought about today, how I solved some problem, or a reminder for three months from now. Why? Because writing as a solitary pursuit is similarily rewarding like reading for pleasure. We can read without growing an audience. We can read without have any extrinsic motivation. We can just do it and leave it at that. But writing is a bit too much associated with communicating (small) and broadcasting (large).

I could probably write a book on the most idiosyncratic topics, something that not even my mother would like to skim the foreword of. Because imagine if that process would help me know myself? How valuable would that be? The writing artifact might be useless, even. But the process could be enriching.

I would never hope to read a book by someone I don't know and be able to absorb their wisdom, not even 10%. Some things cannot be transmitted like that. The printing press probably has not helped us know ourselves more than just, you know modestly more. Some things have to be worked on by you and you alone.

This also translates to more practical subjects than knowing yourself. But that's what I felt like spending the word count here on.

But in terms of public writing. I am currently working on an article-length piece for a niche "publishing". And I find that process to be rewarding.

Re: Write for One Person

#69

What about the complete opposite? Has anyone successfully used literate programming, perhaps even emulating Euclid's Elements, where you provide all the definitions (the precise meaning of concepts), postulates (system assumptions), common concepts (logical rules), propositions (functions), and implementations? Capturing all the logic in a document.

https://blog.plover.com/math/PM.html

Re: Write for One Person

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> because I assumed the people offering me criticism knew what they were talking about

I feel like this is the issue, and it's everywhere, not just HN. So 'fixing' HN wouldn't really solve the problem, each individual needs to learn what criticism they can listen to VS not. In the AFK world we have the benefit of knowing people, so you can implicitly trust some of them, but on the internet you need to first calibrate your "bullshit sensor" so you know what take aways you can actually take vs not.

> 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.

Indeed, I agree :) As long as this happens based on what the person wrote rather than who the person is, you'll learn to eventually get really good at this, and all the mindless criticism becomes no-ops essentially :)

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