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Thank you! The reason for experimenting with a sort of blow-by-blow report style here and detailing the full and true journey of the idea was that I feel the wh

Thank you! The reason for experimenting with a sort of blow-by-blow report style here and detailing the full and true journey of the idea was that I feel the whole process from idea to artifact is not written about enough. That said, it can often be hard to fully pinpoint the actual inception of an idea and just thinking about this one yesterday I realised that the idea likely came up while traversing a long chain of quote tweets. I really appreciate the feedback though—it's especially useful as I'm only starting to publish regularly now so have lots to learn—so thanks again.

Debug_Overload 6y ago
The write-up was great, actually. The whole point of sharing the article is to read about the process and the technical details, I don't know why people insist on these cheap TL;DRs.
- OisinMoran 6y ago
  Thank you!
- delecti 6y ago
  I think enough people want that kind of TL;DR that it's reasonable to put one right up front. I see a similar sort of thing with DIY projects, where they tend to get better attention if the first picture is the finished product, and then it works you through the process. It's partly to placate people who only want to see the finished product, but it also gives enough of a hook to everyone else that I suspect some people will read the article who otherwise wouldn't.
llamataboot 6y ago
I loved the write up, especially those basic things all experienced programmers know but sometimes makes newer ones scared, like sometimes you don't quite know how the answer works exactly at first, or sometimes you have a big idea and a lack of double quotes is your problem, etc etc
- OisinMoran 6y ago
  Thank you! Yes, I think you put what I was trying to capture here really well. When I first attempted to learn programming I got stuck on how to _actually_ run the code and eventually gave up but then started in an actual class in college. So being painfully aware of the gaps that can be left in explanations I try to avoid creating more of them. The ultimate solution that will probably happen at some point is a kind of collapsable/expandable explanation that takes your knowledge into account and can omit the bits you are overly familiar with. One of the difficulties with this would be adoption from the creators so it needs to not have too much overhead—writing is already difficult enough.
samatman 6y ago
There seem to a be a couple of "camps" in HN. Broadly, those who enjoy reading, and those who don't, but endure it as a means to obtain information. I'm in the former camp, and enjoyed your writeup quite a bit. The latter camp will reliably show up when writing is any more long-winded than it absolutely must be, and will a) summarize (good) and b) complain (annoying). It is what it is. Congrats on your whimsical creation!
- OisinMoran 6y ago
  Thank you!
- heimatau 6y ago
  Maybe a constructive message would be 'please post a summary at the top and a stronger conclusion at the bottom' since we're conditioned this way by various written structures.
  - samatman 6y ago
    I would argue that @OisinMoran followed this exact structure, the first section (above the fold) has this: > Fundamentally the challenge is just correctly guessing what ID a given tweet is going to get, then appending that onto the URL for our profile and tweeting it. And of course, the strong conclusion at the bottom is the Tweet itself.
zimpenfish 6y ago
Also loved the write-up (have to, really, it's how I do it too.) HN, 1950s edition: "Look, Mr Tolkien, what I want to know is does the ring go in the mountain? Why do I have to read about this journey?"
alblue 6y ago
As I said, the write up was quite interesting, so don’t take it the wrong way! A long read - including the journey taken to get there - can be educational itself (including wrong turns, proof of concepts etc). The only reason I posted the tweet was because the lede was well and truly buried at the end of the article, and you may have lost some readers’ interest by the time they get there. You could have started with something like “This is how I managed to post a self referential tweet [link]” which would both bring it up front and centre, as a means to entice readers to find out more. Sort of like how some TV episodes begin with “[record scratch] You may wonder how I ended up here...” – deadpool is a movie that begins in that way, for example. For really long posts you might want to have a kind of table of contents that sets up the structure which you can link to parts. Anyway, don’t take my abbreviated summary as negative; I enjoyed it.

Debug_Overload 6y ago

The write-up was great, actually. The whole point of sharing the article is to read about the process and the technical details, I don't know why people insist on these cheap TL;DRs.

OisinMoran 6y ago
Thank you!
delecti 6y ago
I think enough people want that kind of TL;DR that it's reasonable to put one right up front. I see a similar sort of thing with DIY projects, where they tend to get better attention if the first picture is the finished product, and then it works you through the process. It's partly to placate people who only want to see the finished product, but it also gives enough of a hook to everyone else that I suspect some people will read the article who otherwise wouldn't.

llamataboot 6y ago

I loved the write up, especially those basic things all experienced programmers know but sometimes makes newer ones scared, like sometimes you don't quite know how the answer works exactly at first, or sometimes you have a big idea and a lack of double quotes is your problem, etc etc

OisinMoran 6y ago
Thank you! Yes, I think you put what I was trying to capture here really well. When I first attempted to learn programming I got stuck on how to _actually_ run the code and eventually gave up but then started in an actual class in college. So being painfully aware of the gaps that can be left in explanations I try to avoid creating more of them. The ultimate solution that will probably happen at some point is a kind of collapsable/expandable explanation that takes your knowledge into account and can omit the bits you are overly familiar with. One of the difficulties with this would be adoption from the creators so it needs to not have too much overhead—writing is already difficult enough.

samatman 6y ago

There seem to a be a couple of "camps" in HN. Broadly, those who enjoy reading, and those who don't, but endure it as a means to obtain information. I'm in the former camp, and enjoyed your writeup quite a bit. The latter camp will reliably show up when writing is any more long-winded than it absolutely must be, and will a) summarize (good) and b) complain (annoying). It is what it is. Congrats on your whimsical creation!

OisinMoran 6y ago
Thank you!
heimatau 6y ago
Maybe a constructive message would be 'please post a summary at the top and a stronger conclusion at the bottom' since we're conditioned this way by various written structures.
- samatman 6y ago
  I would argue that @OisinMoran followed this exact structure, the first section (above the fold) has this: > Fundamentally the challenge is just correctly guessing what ID a given tweet is going to get, then appending that onto the URL for our profile and tweeting it. And of course, the strong conclusion at the bottom is the Tweet itself.

zimpenfish 6y ago

Also loved the write-up (have to, really, it's how I do it too.) HN, 1950s edition: "Look, Mr Tolkien, what I want to know is does the ring go in the mountain? Why do I have to read about this journey?"

alblue 6y ago

As I said, the write up was quite interesting, so don’t take it the wrong way! A long read - including the journey taken to get there - can be educational itself (including wrong turns, proof of concepts etc). The only reason I posted the tweet was because the lede was well and truly buried at the end of the article, and you may have lost some readers’ interest by the time they get there. You could have started with something like “This is how I managed to post a self referential tweet [link]” which would both bring it up front and centre, as a means to entice readers to find out more. Sort of like how some TV episodes begin with “[record scratch] You may wonder how I ended up here...” – deadpool is a movie that begins in that way, for example. For really long posts you might want to have a kind of table of contents that sets up the structure which you can link to parts. Anyway, don’t take my abbreviated summary as negative; I enjoyed it.