4 ms·

A Twitter thread by the author can be found here: https://twitter.com/kenshirriff/status/1596622754593259526 https://twitter.com/kenshirriff/status/15966227545

A Twitter thread by the author can be found here: https://twitter.com/kenshirriff/status/1596622754593259526 https://twitter.com/kenshirriff/status/1596622754593259526

raphlinus 4y ago
Or, if you prefer Mastodon: https://mastodon.online/@kenshirriff@oldbytes.space/109412325585692106 https://mastodon.online/@kenshirriff@oldbytes.space/10941232...
kens 4y ago
Usually if I post a Twitter thread, people on HN want a blog post instead. I'm not used to people wanting the Twitter thread :)
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  Blogs are too readable. I prefer the challenge of mentally stitching together individual sentences interspersed by ads.
  - IIAOPSW 4y ago
    Well I've got great news for you (1/4)
- lazzlazzlazz 4y ago
  The Twitter thread is better. You get the full context of other peoples' reactions, comments, references, etc. This is lost with blogs. It's the same reason why many people go to the Hacker News comments before clicking the article. :)
  - Shared404 4y ago
    I like having the twitter/mastodon thread easily linked, but 10/10 times would rather see the article first.
  - serf 4y ago
    >The Twitter thread is better. let's recognize subjectivity a bit here. it's different, you may like it more -- that's great , but prove 'better' a bit better. i've said this dozens of times, and i'm sure people are getting tired of the sentiment, but Twitter is a worse reading experience than all but the very worst blog formats for long-format content. ads, forced long-form formatting that breaks flow constantly, absolutely unrelated commentary half of the time (from people that have absolutely no clout or experience with whatever subject), and the forced MeTooism/Whataboutism inherent with social media platforms and their trolling audience. It gets a lot of things right with communication, and many people love reading long-form things on Twitter -- but really i'm just asking you to convince me here ; there is very little 'better' from what I see : help me to realize the offerings. tl;dr : old man says 'I just don't get IT.' w.r.t. long-form tweeting.
    - lazzlazzlazz 4y ago
      It should be very obvious that when someone says "X is better" they mean that — in their estimation and according to their beliefs, X is better. Spelling it all out isn't always necessary.
      - anyfoo 4y ago
        I don't think that's obvious. You could well mean that "X is better" in general, and consequentially even advocate that "so Y, which is not better, is a waste of resources and should not be done". It's hard for an outside observer to judge which one you mean, and just in case you meant the advocating one, people might feel to discuss to prevent damage. It's easy for you to clarify with "specifically for me" or something similar. And there even is something that I think is generally better, namely that I've seen this blog (and others) attract long form comments from people who were also there, and elaborate some more historical details in them. On Twitter it's mostly condensed to the bare minimum, which you can see on this very Twitter thread! So losing the blog would be bad.
      - ilyt 4y ago
        In according to subjective media, sure. But in tech-focused social media, not really. There are mostly objective things (like too little contrast, or site working slow) that can be said about readability for example.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    I won't quite say I don't care about other people's reactions (seeing as I'm here on HN, caring about other people's reactions), but Twitter makes it annoying enough to follow the original multi-tweet material such that I greatly prefer the blog post.
- bhaak 4y ago
  Twitter threads force the author to be more concise and split the thoughts into smaller pieces. And if there are picture to the tweets that makes them even better. It's a very good starting point, getting a summary of the topic, before diving into a longer blog post knowing what to expect and with some knowledge you probably didn't have before. The way I'm learning best is having some skeleton that can be fleshed out. A concise Twitter threads builds such a skeleton if I didn't have it already.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    Forcing to be concise in nuanced topics usually does more bad than good. And format of Twitter is abhorrent. Like, even your comment would need to be split into 2 twits Then again I read pretty fast so someone writing slightly longer sentence than absolutely necessary doesn't really bother me in the first place
    - bhaak 4y ago
      > Forcing to be concise in nuanced topics usually does more bad than good. Following that argument you can't ever build up proper knowledge unless you get a deep introduction into a topic. > And format of Twitter is abhorrent. I disagree but you need to write to its format. Just writing a blog post and then splitting it up for cramming as much as possible into a tweet, possibly even breaking within a sentence, yes, that is abhorrent. > Like, even your comment would need to be split into 2 twits 3 even if you preserve the paragraphs I used. > Then again I read pretty fast so someone writing slightly longer sentence than absolutely necessary doesn't really bother me in the first place It's not about reading slow, it's about getting small pieces of information. Tweets usually don't have the fluff that many blog posts do. Or even articles that take up one third of the whole piece to describe a person in a coffee shop, drinking a specific brand of coffee to illustrate some superficial point that has a vague connection to the actual topic of the article.
- kjs3 4y ago
  For Odins sake, PLEASE don't add the mental complexity of just trying to read a Twitter thread on top on the mental complexity of grokking your posts. This is what blogs are for.

A Twitter thread by the author can be found here: https://twitter.com/kenshirriff/status/1596622754593259526 https://twitter.com/kenshirriff/status/1596622754593259526

raphlinus 4y ago

Or, if you prefer Mastodon: https://mastodon.online/@kenshirriff@oldbytes.space/109412325585692106 https://mastodon.online/@kenshirriff@oldbytes.space/10941232...

kens 4y ago

Usually if I post a Twitter thread, people on HN want a blog post instead. I'm not used to people wanting the Twitter thread :)

jiggawatts 4y ago
Blogs are too readable. I prefer the challenge of mentally stitching together individual sentences interspersed by ads.
- IIAOPSW 4y ago
  Well I've got great news for you (1/4)
lazzlazzlazz 4y ago
The Twitter thread is better. You get the full context of other peoples' reactions, comments, references, etc. This is lost with blogs. It's the same reason why many people go to the Hacker News comments before clicking the article. :)
- Shared404 4y ago
  I like having the twitter/mastodon thread easily linked, but 10/10 times would rather see the article first.
- serf 4y ago
  >The Twitter thread is better. let's recognize subjectivity a bit here. it's different, you may like it more -- that's great , but prove 'better' a bit better. i've said this dozens of times, and i'm sure people are getting tired of the sentiment, but Twitter is a worse reading experience than all but the very worst blog formats for long-format content. ads, forced long-form formatting that breaks flow constantly, absolutely unrelated commentary half of the time (from people that have absolutely no clout or experience with whatever subject), and the forced MeTooism/Whataboutism inherent with social media platforms and their trolling audience. It gets a lot of things right with communication, and many people love reading long-form things on Twitter -- but really i'm just asking you to convince me here ; there is very little 'better' from what I see : help me to realize the offerings. tl;dr : old man says 'I just don't get IT.' w.r.t. long-form tweeting.
  - lazzlazzlazz 4y ago
    It should be very obvious that when someone says "X is better" they mean that — in their estimation and according to their beliefs, X is better. Spelling it all out isn't always necessary.
    - anyfoo 4y ago
      I don't think that's obvious. You could well mean that "X is better" in general, and consequentially even advocate that "so Y, which is not better, is a waste of resources and should not be done". It's hard for an outside observer to judge which one you mean, and just in case you meant the advocating one, people might feel to discuss to prevent damage. It's easy for you to clarify with "specifically for me" or something similar. And there even is something that I think is generally better, namely that I've seen this blog (and others) attract long form comments from people who were also there, and elaborate some more historical details in them. On Twitter it's mostly condensed to the bare minimum, which you can see on this very Twitter thread! So losing the blog would be bad.
    - ilyt 4y ago
      In according to subjective media, sure. But in tech-focused social media, not really. There are mostly objective things (like too little contrast, or site working slow) that can be said about readability for example.
- kelnos 4y ago
  I won't quite say I don't care about other people's reactions (seeing as I'm here on HN, caring about other people's reactions), but Twitter makes it annoying enough to follow the original multi-tweet material such that I greatly prefer the blog post.
bhaak 4y ago
Twitter threads force the author to be more concise and split the thoughts into smaller pieces. And if there are picture to the tweets that makes them even better. It's a very good starting point, getting a summary of the topic, before diving into a longer blog post knowing what to expect and with some knowledge you probably didn't have before. The way I'm learning best is having some skeleton that can be fleshed out. A concise Twitter threads builds such a skeleton if I didn't have it already.
- ilyt 4y ago
  Forcing to be concise in nuanced topics usually does more bad than good. And format of Twitter is abhorrent. Like, even your comment would need to be split into 2 twits Then again I read pretty fast so someone writing slightly longer sentence than absolutely necessary doesn't really bother me in the first place
  - bhaak 4y ago
    > Forcing to be concise in nuanced topics usually does more bad than good. Following that argument you can't ever build up proper knowledge unless you get a deep introduction into a topic. > And format of Twitter is abhorrent. I disagree but you need to write to its format. Just writing a blog post and then splitting it up for cramming as much as possible into a tweet, possibly even breaking within a sentence, yes, that is abhorrent. > Like, even your comment would need to be split into 2 twits 3 even if you preserve the paragraphs I used. > Then again I read pretty fast so someone writing slightly longer sentence than absolutely necessary doesn't really bother me in the first place It's not about reading slow, it's about getting small pieces of information. Tweets usually don't have the fluff that many blog posts do. Or even articles that take up one third of the whole piece to describe a person in a coffee shop, drinking a specific brand of coffee to illustrate some superficial point that has a vague connection to the actual topic of the article.
kjs3 4y ago
For Odins sake, PLEASE don't add the mental complexity of just trying to read a Twitter thread on top on the mental complexity of grokking your posts. This is what blogs are for.