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If you're writing for a broader audience, then all the more reason to omit this history. It's like hearing about Darth Vader's childhood; people just want you t
by idlewords 9y ago
If you're writing for a broader audience, then all the more reason to omit this history. It's like hearing about Darth Vader's childhood; people just want you to get to the good part.
I like to think of it this way: readers from a general audience have a certain mental budget for understanding that they bring to an article like this. Once they exhaust that budget, you've lost them. So it helps to take special care to spend it on your key points.
It also, if I can be frank, makes you look hungry for credit, which you'll get more of if you play it cool.
- tanderson92 9y agoI have no background in computer architecture security or security at all, and appreciated the background of how he saw his work fit into the current day. Especially so because cperciva's original paper was being widely shared on HN in the ensuing Spectre/Meltdown threads.
- cperciva 9y agoFair enough. My personal writing style tends towards the narrative "start at the beginning and tell the story in chronological order" but I certainly understand the desire to "get to the good part". If I ever write a blog post about scrypt and all the work which has come after it, maybe I'll skip the lengthy analysis of how Tarsnap customers inspired me to investigate the topic of password-based key derivation. :-)