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

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 )