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I am so interested in this submission (based on the title), but that's such a big wall of text, even the LOTR trilogy looks more manageable If you have read it
by not_your_vase 2y ago
I am so interested in this submission (based on the title), but that's such a big wall of text, even the LOTR trilogy looks more manageable
If you have read it, do you regret the time you spent on it? Just trying to get some "goodreads" reviews, with or without spoilers, before committing to it...
- intended 2y agoIt Was worth the time/effort for me.
- bell-cot 2y agoOnly skimmed it...but yeah, not worth reading. Unless you're one of today's 10K, it's mostly obvious stuff. And if there's any real structure or "big picture" to the article, I couldn't spot it.
- PaulHoule 2y agoAs a crazy fast reader I liked it but now that I think about it, problems with product quality were a major preoccupation of the 1970s. There is a triangle between inflation <-> poor quality <-> shortages in that these all stem from the same root and the proportion in which they manifest depend on the system (e.g. in Soviet Russia they could legislate prices but couldn't legislate availability of products) It was the decade of Ralph Nader. See https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nothing-Works-Anthropology-Original/dp/0671635778 https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nothing-Works-Anthropology-Origin... https://www.amazon.com/Out-Crisis-W-Edwards-Deming/dp/0521305535 https://www.amazon.com/Out-Crisis-W-Edwards-Deming/dp/052130... https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Narcissism-American-Diminishing-Expectations/dp/0393356175 https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Narcissism-American-Diminishi... A few themes could be broken out, not least "mongo sucks" (I never worked at a company that didn't trust the database they used at all until I worked at one that used mongo) and a meditation on "buy" vs "build" that leans heavily towards build. (When I hear the word "integration" I reach for my keyboard and code up a 15-line python script while management is on hold waiting to hear what the "call us" price is)
- javcasas 2y ago> When I hear the word "integration" I reach for my keyword and code up a 15-line python script while management is on hold waiting to hear what the "call us" price is Stop doing that. Management wants someone to blame when things go wrong. Don't be that one for no extra compensation.
- Der_Einzige 2y agoRalph Nader is a saint and democrats need to ask why 200K democrats stayed home in Florida in 2000, not why Nader got 3%…
- TheOtherHobbes 2y agoIt's interesting. But it rambles and doesn't draw any actionable conclusions, beyond "Sometimes it's a good idea to be annoying and push back if you think things are going in a bad direction." Essentially he's talking about enshittification, but he doesn't break down the core issue - which is that US corporate culture is authoritarian and narcissistic. So the true underlying motivation in many interactions is assertion of superiority for sellers, and the creation of an illusion of superiority for buyers. Both are entirely orthogonal to objective quality.
- amelius 2y agoYou could dump it into an LLM and ask for a summary.
- magicalhippo 2y agoFWIW I ran LLama 3.3 70B locally for fun, which took about 50 minutes thanks to not having a Mac nor several 4090s, and it gave me this: The essay argues that the efficient markets hypothesis, which states that markets enforce efficiency and eliminate inefficiencies, is not always true in practice. The author provides numerous examples from various industries, including tech, shipping, and accounting, where companies and individuals have struggled to find reliable and high-quality products or services due to information asymmetry and market failures. The essay suggests that this is often due to cultural norms and expectations that prioritize short-term gains over long-term quality and reliability. As a result, companies may be forced to "build" rather than "buy" solutions in order to get what they need, which can be costly and inefficient. However, the author also notes that building instead of buying is not a panacea, and that dysfunctional teams and organizations can still produce poor products. Ultimately, the essay argues that trust, both within and between companies, is essential for creating efficient and effective markets, and that cultural norms and expectations play a significant role in shaping market outcomes.
- hindsightbias 2y agoYou should do a substack "Shorter Dan Luu" From reading the comments here, you'd do well.
- magicalhippo 2y agoHeh, don't think I'll quit my day job just yet.
- greenie_beans 2y agothis dude's MO is long ass essays
- boxed 2y agoYes it's worth it. Dan Luu has always been worth to read whenever I read it. But I get it. I too have the Instagram disease and balk at long walls of text. It's just that we do need to fight that...
- dartos 2y agoThis subject is interesting to me, sorry for the rant. Writers could try to split up their work to better appeal to an audience that does quick scans, then reads where it matters. This article may be great, but there’s not even any section headings, so I’m not able to gauge my own interest. In our era where there is so much content to consume and where so much of it is just hot garbage or advertising, I don’t want to spend time deeply reading everything in hopes that I care about it. I need to be able to asses that at a glance, then dive in if I deem it meaningful enough. Writers should probably change their style to accommodate their audience (if they care about really wide reach)
- klum 2y agoSpeculating here but I'd say a big part of the reason Dan Luu has as big a reach as he has is that he isn't the kind of writer who'll change his style to accommodate the audience that just wants to do a quick scan.
- dartos 2y agoMaybe, but I don’t know Dan. Never read anything written by them (besides this) I’d like to read deeply about something interesting, but with so much LLM slop around, I’m much less willing to dive right into a long article.
- CamperBob2 2y agoWriters could try to split up their work to better appeal to an audience that does quick scans, then reads where it matters. That was one of the original visions behind hypertext - that it would not only link documents together, but provide a way to summarize the content at varying levels of detail, allowing up-down traversal rather than just lateral links. MIP mapping for text, basically. We're starting to see a bit of a revival of that idea, where language models generate summaries at the paragraph level that readers can either browse quickly or use as a jumping-off point into the underlying original content. This page seems like a good application for that.
- Workaccount2 2y agoI gave it to gemini 2 and asked for a bullet point summary. People don't like this, but it got me through meat of the article in 2 minutes.
- rwmj 2y agoFirefox Reader mode makes it much nicer to read. The quality of the actual article is somewhat "meh", passed the time but nothing surprising or that interesting.
- singron 2y agoI usually reduce the width of my browser window, but reader mode is a great idea too. I like the minimal aesthetic, but text width is so important to readability that danluu really should add a max width.
- AmVess 2y agoI can't read it because he made the website unreadable. Kind of interesting considering his subject matter.
- mobilene 2y agoPart of the challenge is how wide his text column is. It makes the lines hard to scan; your eye can't fall on a line just once or twice to scan it, but must keep falling, which makes the text feel more tedious. Easily fixed by narrowing the browser window, of course.
- Sharlin 2y agoOr using the reader mode.
- hindsightbias 2y agoOften, it's the little things. Particularly with excellence. While I might be amenable to the tenets of this kind of stream-of-conciousness, this is the kind of guy I might enjoy lunch with but I'd never want to work on a team with him.
- portaouflop 2y agoIt’s just a difference in taste I think - I for one love this style of writing and the longer the wall of text the better
- nottorp 2y agoI enlarged the font :)
- jcalx 2y agoI respect committing to zero formatting but just one "max-width: 600px" would make this so much easier to read.
- mst 2y agoI opened the devtools to narrow the page. Given how much more aggravation I go through getting lots of sites that _do_ have formatting to contort into a shape I find comfortable to read, I found it hard to mind much.
- braiamp 2y agoReader mode.
- mattgreenrocks 2y agoI mean, yes? It certainly beats reading social media posts and outlines particular instantiations of a cultural blindspot.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoIt's not long. Excluding the footnotes, it's ~5000 words, a 10-20 minute read.
- piva00 2y agoIt's quite good, I used my browser's "Reader Mode" to be able to read it though.
- sesm 2y agoI've read about 50% and really like it so far. Also, limiting width and centering text from JS console greatly improved the readability: $('main').style.width = '600px'; $('main').style.margin = '0 auto';
- tayo42 2y agoIt's on the front page with a little over 100 votes. Up votes are basically saying it's worth it... If it wasn't worth reading it wouldn't have been up voted
- not_your_vase 2y agoLol okay, but mine was the first comment and second upvote, so it was pretty empty back then here, and it was still at the top of the "new" page.
- mukti 2y agoAgreed - the edge-to-edge text can seem daunting and be a bit of a pain to read, depending on your display. I used reader mode to make it a bit more managable. Also worth noting the last ~30% of the page is two appendixes. I think the article is worth a read, but doesn't necessarily introduce a new concept. Its basically stating that there are many broken products that you can buy, and they simply do not work. Typical wisdom says you should buy something you're not specifically good at building, or something that you're not "supposed to" build yourself because you specialize in something else. This article basically says that wisdom can be wrong and that there is value in building yourself. There are some good examples, but its definitely a position that you'd have to push to management at some companies because its a very bottom up position that many managers would not agree with.
- rsanek 2y agoupvotes tell you that people find it useful. we have ai now to effectively summarize the text if you want to avoid reading the whole thing. this is a solved problem
- Suppafly 2y ago>I am so interested in this submission (based on the title), but that's such a big wall of text, even the LOTR trilogy looks more manageable I came here before clicking the link and was all set to be like "just read it" but it really does seem designed to be as unreadable as possible, both the layout and colors and the writing itself. I'm sure he's probably writing for an existing audience, but even the writing doesn't seem to be design to draw the reader in or be particularly accessible for people who aren't already primed to read it.
- vincentmarle 2y agoDan's website is the only one where I have to use Safari's Reader mode
- stronglikedan 2y agoAI-summarize that shit!
- kerkeslager 2y agoComplex ideas are inherently hard to read. If you shy away from anything that's complex, you're just limiting yourself to consuming only the most simplistic thought. Case in point: the LotR trilogy is an absurdly low bar for manageability. Literally millions of people have read those books. There are certainly different levels of comprehension, but I'd venture most people who read these books were able to at least follow the plot well enough to be entertained by it. I read them when I was maybe 12, and that's not me claiming to be some sort of prodigy--they are very easy to read. If that level of reading is unapproachable to you, I would suggest that's a problem with you that you would benefit from working on. The original link is a bit dry but otherwise not a challenging read.
- shadytrees 2y agotry this alt stylesheet https://ddanluu.com/nothing-works https://ddanluu.com/nothing-works
- zanellato19 2y agoThis is so much better! It basically makes the same changes as Firefox Reader's mode does.