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As is standard most serious writing formats, the answer to the question(s) posed at the start can be found in the conclusion. You are free to read the conclusio

As is standard most serious writing formats, the answer to the question(s) posed at the start can be found in the conclusion. You are free to read the conclusion any time you want. For example, I've heard that the best way to read academic papers to read these sections in this order: abstract, intro, conclusion, methods. You can read other sections if you would like, but the core of the papers' message will be in those 4. The rest of the paper provides details. I do think that more structure would make the blog post easier to read and navigate, but since the information you were seeking is easily found within the structure that exists, I don't think your critique makes much sense.

jessriedel 6y ago
The standard for most serious writing formats is an abstract where the important results of the paper are summarized, and an introduction where the author lays out the structure of the document. And in something shorter without as many sections, you still say the important bits up front. As the second paragraph of my comment makes clear, the point isn't to critique this particular blog post, it's to wonder why, when the author raises the question, he doesn't then just immediately summarize the answer in one sentence, and why this is so generally common across so much writing. I really do think this is a general phenomenon rather than an isolated issue. (Also, just as a datapoint: On this separate HN thread I pulled out the conclusion of the OP and posted it as a comment. Even though it was very easy to find since it was simply the last two sentences of the post, readers apparently found my comment extremely helpful and it was upvoted more than 100 times. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25742276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25742276 )
- jbay808 6y ago
  Unfortunately, the common pattern for an academic abstract is something like: In this paper, the Soyuz clock is analyzed in detail and the underlying reason for its high complexity is described. You still usually have to access the full paper to get the reason itself...
  - jessriedel 6y ago
    I agree that this happens all the time in academic writing and it's terrible.

jessriedel 6y ago

The standard for most serious writing formats is an abstract where the important results of the paper are summarized, and an introduction where the author lays out the structure of the document. And in something shorter without as many sections, you still say the important bits up front. As the second paragraph of my comment makes clear, the point isn't to critique this particular blog post, it's to wonder why, when the author raises the question, he doesn't then just immediately summarize the answer in one sentence, and why this is so generally common across so much writing. I really do think this is a general phenomenon rather than an isolated issue. (Also, just as a datapoint: On this separate HN thread I pulled out the conclusion of the OP and posted it as a comment. Even though it was very easy to find since it was simply the last two sentences of the post, readers apparently found my comment extremely helpful and it was upvoted more than 100 times. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25742276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25742276 )

jbay808 6y ago
Unfortunately, the common pattern for an academic abstract is something like: In this paper, the Soyuz clock is analyzed in detail and the underlying reason for its high complexity is described. You still usually have to access the full paper to get the reason itself...
- jessriedel 6y ago
  I agree that this happens all the time in academic writing and it's terrible.