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This is great seeing so many PG essays! I've really missed his writing. > And at elite universities, that means nearly everyone, since someone who didn't care

This is great seeing so many PG essays! I've really missed his writing. > And at elite universities, that means nearly everyone, since someone who didn't care about getting good grades probably wouldn't be there in the first place. The result is that students compete to maximize the difference between learning and getting good grades. > When I started advising startup founders at Y Combinator, especially young ones, I was puzzled by the way they always seemed to make things overcomplicated. I suspect part of the problem (of early founders being focused on hacking tests) was related to how heavily YC funded people from elite universities—which select people who do exactly that.

anonytrary 7y ago
> This is great seeing so many PG essays! I've really missed his writing. I love reading his tweets! They're all so down to earth and illuminating. That said, I'm not a fan of his blog writing as much. I find it full of overly-sparse nuggets of wisdom. It needs to be more concise, to the point, with fewer clever metaphors. This article could've been compressed 70% and still have been human readable.
- pyb 7y ago
  pg seems to have a backlog of essay ideas that he's catching up on. This is all good, but also means that they get written a bit too quickly. It's the classic "had I had more time to spend on this text, it would have been shorter" syndrome.
  - anonytrary 7y ago
    Indeed, time is of the essence; playing tug-of-war with quality.
- kashyapc 7y ago
  I've read the article in full. It raises an important point, but it's indeed a laborious read. As I read it, the haunting paragraph from The Elements of Style came to mind: "Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell." - - - If you enjoy the essay form, I highly recommend the "Essays of E.B. White" (yes, the same White of The Elements of Style). Some of the essays stay with you for a long time. https://www.harpercollins.com/9780060932237/essays-of-e-b-white/ https://www.harpercollins.com/9780060932237/essays-of-e-b-wh...

anonytrary 7y ago

> This is great seeing so many PG essays! I've really missed his writing. I love reading his tweets! They're all so down to earth and illuminating. That said, I'm not a fan of his blog writing as much. I find it full of overly-sparse nuggets of wisdom. It needs to be more concise, to the point, with fewer clever metaphors. This article could've been compressed 70% and still have been human readable.

pyb 7y ago
pg seems to have a backlog of essay ideas that he's catching up on. This is all good, but also means that they get written a bit too quickly. It's the classic "had I had more time to spend on this text, it would have been shorter" syndrome.
- anonytrary 7y ago
  Indeed, time is of the essence; playing tug-of-war with quality.
kashyapc 7y ago
I've read the article in full. It raises an important point, but it's indeed a laborious read. As I read it, the haunting paragraph from The Elements of Style came to mind: "Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell." - - - If you enjoy the essay form, I highly recommend the "Essays of E.B. White" (yes, the same White of The Elements of Style). Some of the essays stay with you for a long time. https://www.harpercollins.com/9780060932237/essays-of-e-b-white/ https://www.harpercollins.com/9780060932237/essays-of-e-b-wh...