3 ms·

Horrible way to write, so many unnessecary words. Not for me.

bravetraveler 5y ago
I agree, but I know some people who like this style. Personally I want the gory technical details. This reads like those recipe sites that give you an unnecessary life backstory. The gore may be less approachable, but I'd say the overall effort to understanding the material is less.
- toyg 5y ago
  The style can work. In this case it largely doesn't, mostly because the writer insists in trying to be cute about "Tim". Tim is a sockpuppet for the author, like Socrates in Plato's works. After the first couple of paragraphs, there is no point pretending he is anything but that. Trying to flesh him out, over and over through the text, is a waste of everyone's time.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dang 5y ago
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- suction 5y ago
  "So many unnecessary words" to me is a good observation of the post's shortcomings, and ironically also applies to your comment.
  - dang 5y ago
    It isn't interesting to list the generic shortcomings of a post. We want curious conversation here. The moderation comments I post are for sure repetitive and tedious. The justification for them is not that they're interesting in their own right (they aren't! and they're even more tedious to write than to read). It's that without them, HN would be globally worse off. They're an out-of-band feedback channel forming one component of the system by which the forum regulates itself. You can compare them to medicine which is toxic but which one takes anyway because the alternative is worse. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=tedious%20write%20read%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
suction 5y ago
Agree.

I agree, but I know some people who like this style. Personally I want the gory technical details. This reads like those recipe sites that give you an unnecessary life backstory. The gore may be less approachable, but I'd say the overall effort to understanding the material is less.

toyg 5y ago
The style can work. In this case it largely doesn't, mostly because the writer insists in trying to be cute about "Tim". Tim is a sockpuppet for the author, like Socrates in Plato's works. After the first couple of paragraphs, there is no point pretending he is anything but that. Trying to flesh him out, over and over through the text, is a waste of everyone's time.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dang 5y ago

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

suction 5y ago
"So many unnecessary words" to me is a good observation of the post's shortcomings, and ironically also applies to your comment.
- dang 5y ago
  It isn't interesting to list the generic shortcomings of a post. We want curious conversation here. The moderation comments I post are for sure repetitive and tedious. The justification for them is not that they're interesting in their own right (they aren't! and they're even more tedious to write than to read). It's that without them, HN would be globally worse off. They're an out-of-band feedback channel forming one component of the system by which the forum regulates itself. You can compare them to medicine which is toxic but which one takes anyway because the alternative is worse. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=tedious%20write%20read%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

suction 5y ago

Agree.