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Black and white ideas can be expressed succinctly. Shades of gray require detail. Short and sharp writing is like candy for the brain. It feels rewarding to co
by reitzensteinm 14y ago
Black and white ideas can be expressed succinctly. Shades of gray require detail.
Short and sharp writing is like candy for the brain. It feels rewarding to consume, but ultimately has little educational merit.
Taking a chainsaw to grellas' posts would remove the detail that makes them fantastic and educational reads.
I've written short posts about patents before. One of them got 72 upvotes this week. Nobody learned a damn thing from it.
Hacker News needs more of grellas, and less of me. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
- wpietri 14y agoAlthough this is true, I think the post from grellas could be trimmed substantially without losing nuance. And what remains could be formatted much more readably. Writing for the web is different than writing for print. If grellas wants to maximize the spread of his ideas, he would benefit from learning a new approach.
- Jgrubb 14y agoOn the other hand, his approach was perfect for me. A matter of opinion maybe?
- wpietri 14y agoSure, but in writing for a broad audience, you aim to cover the bulk of the readers despite differing tastes. If you look at the examples from Jakob Nielsen's work on writing for the web, you can see that people who are fine with the giant-wall-o'-text approach are also fine with something that shows more structure.