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What concerns me is that I see quite a lot of writers who don't know the difference between fact and opinion. Without that, the reader doesn't have much hope. E
by wpietri 4y ago
What concerns me is that I see quite a lot of writers who don't know the difference between fact and opinion. Without that, the reader doesn't have much hope. Especially when the writer has some incentive to muddy the waters.
I'm all for pieces clearly from a personal perspective. There one can drop the redundant "I think" bits. But often dropping the qualifier turns it from a statement about one person to a universal statement, as with the title of the article. For me this erases the many interesting possibilities in between.
For example, a post title something like, "Which programmers find Ruby more readable than Python?" is way more interesting. The universal is false, but I'm sure it's true for some people and false for others. An exploration of that could lead to interesting ways to think about languages. E.g., is it better for novice programmers? For programmers from non-engineering backgrounds? For programmers with difference cognitive styles or capabilities?
- pessimizer 4y ago> "Which programmers find Ruby more readable than Python?" What if you don't care about analyzing the psychologies of programmers, and just want to say why one thing is more readable than another thing?
- wpietri 4y agoReadable for whom? And how could you possibly understand why something is readable for a given person or group without touching upon psychological topics? Reading is a mental experience that varies from person to person in many ways. Reading code even more so.
- klodolph 4y agoThis has always been true. However, the way that you should distinguish fact from opinion is analyzing the content. You should not rely on other people to explain to you which things are facts and which things are opinions. In a world where people (in general) are capable of distinguishing fact from opinion (most of the time), you can omit the "I think", "I believe", "I feel" crap. In a world where people are bad at distinguishing fact from opinion, you can't rely on the "I think", "I believe", "I feel" crap because writers wouldn't be able to use them correctly.
- wpietri 4y agoThat the reader should distinguish fact from opinion in no way absolves the writer of doing that first and expressing clearly which is which.