4 ms·

My favorite quote from Mark Twain is “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead”. Indeed, brevity and clarity actually take time

My favorite quote from Mark Twain is “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead”. Indeed, brevity and clarity actually take time and analysis. I find this to be very true when writing requirements or documentation. Some of the worst requirements I’ve read have been extremely wordy and unnecessarily over-technical or jargon-heavy when it could have been explained in plain language. As usual, it very much depends on the target audience.

necovek 1mo ago
Incidentally, that's my favourite quote from Blaise Pascal: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/
- asdfasvea 1mo ago
  My favorite quote for 10 years was from my 1993 college math professor: You will never go wrong attributing a pithy quote to Benjamin Franklin or Mark Twain. And then the internet became popular.
  - necovek 1mo ago
    I think your professor took that one from Franklin... or was it Mark Twain?
    - madcaptenor 1mo ago
      Franklin couldn't predict the future. It was Twain, saying you'd never go wrong attributing a quote to Franklin.
      - necovek 1mo ago
        Respecting a timeline only matters in some universes, and in the Universe of Quotes, it certainly does not!
  - bookofjoe 1mo ago
    When I was in college I read: At a party, want to have people think you're really smart? If someone asks "Where's that [quote] from?" quickly respond "The Bible or Shakespeare." In English, you'll be right 50% of the time.
- waynesonfire 1mo ago
  If only the LLM coding zealots were aware of this wisdom.
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
cpt_sobel 1mo ago
Similarly I often read ticket or PR descriptions written by Claude that are so jargon-heavy that I just can't understand on first try. On one side it's a reality check because I always considered English to be close to a mother tongue for me, on the other side I never had to deal with words like "idempotent"... (Seriously, when did this become one of the go-to words to use?)
- Modified3019 1mo ago
  Idempotent is definitely a word that’s strangely awkward and alien to actually use, but makes reasonable sense when the etymology is known. The closest alternative I can think of is debouncing/debounced
- interf4ce 1mo ago
  Idempotency is a crucial trait in the world of web APIs (and any other system where commands that modify state might need to be retried due to communication failures). It's not a new word or concept, but it's certainly a niche one.
- joshuahedlund 1mo ago
  > jargon-heavy Yes. It’s even worse than jargon tho I think it just invents its own metaphors. At first I thought this was clever and useful, helping me to internalize the code (“the normal path vs the escape hatch”) but I’m increasingly finding the metaphors to be so thick and esoteric that it’s actually a hurdle to understanding the actual code.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
- FabHK 1mo ago
  Also used in mathematics. A projection P is basically an idempotent mapping, that is P(P(x)) = P(x) for all x.
trashb 1mo ago
I find that this quote is not just applicable to writing of natural language like letters. It also applies to code, and is becoming more and more evident to me due to the use of AI. I believe the idea presented transcends writing actually. For example you could also apply it to painting or sculpting. I think this points to the character of creative thinking where one "chips" away at a subject until it is considered as finished.
- WillAdams 1mo ago
  The classic example of writing tight and efficient code is: https://folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html https://folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html
jonathanlydall 1mo ago
Yes, but it can be worth it as I've generally found that the most effective professional writing has your high-level request appear within the very first sentence. This is because it as quickly as possible puts the reader into the context of what you need from them making your rationalization of the request reinforce it, whereas if you try to rationalize before getting to your request a busy reader (think customer support, exec, manager) will be thinking "Okay, okay, okay, what are they getting to? Okay, okay, oh there we go finally I know, now let's consider their rationalization, maybe I should scroll up and re-read". I started doing this after having done email customer service many years ago, when you're expected to spend as little time as possible per support case, you will speed read their writing until you find the part which says what their issue is, for some emails this was paragraphs. A particularly memorable WoW case for me was something like this, but more verbose: "I finished the raid last night where we managed to down <boss name>, after we celebrated, I logged off. Then I woke up and went to school as usual, after getting home I tried logging on it showed a message saying I was banned, I was heart-broken as I've put so much time into the game and it means so much to me, so to find out why I logged into my Gmail and an email from you said I was banned due to <reason>." As a support person, all of that was completely irrelevant except for the part saying "I was banned due to <reason>" (which was commonly due account being compromised by a gold seller looting it and then auto-banned due to stuff they were doing on it). Something else which reinforced my view of "get to the point quickly" was an HN comment saying how they were once sent on a course on "how as an engineer to communicate effectively with execs" which apparently essentially stated "write your email as you normally would, then at the end take the last paragraph and put it at the top of the email". The rationale being that execs are typically only interested in reading a full email if it's actually relevant to them.
- jodacola 1mo ago
  This sounds a lot like the BLUF technique [0]. This is one of my favorite techniques in professional settings. I don't interpret this as contradictory to the OP's point and quote: in order to determine the most important first line, one must slow down to identify exactly what that is. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication)
- 1mo ago
bookofjoe 1mo ago
Classic Spanish proverb: "Vísteme despacio, que tengo prisa." Literally meaning "Dress me slowly, because I'm in a hurry."
stillpointlab 1mo ago
This brought to mind the often quoted assumption that intelligence and compression are intimately related. A well edited letter may therefore be a sign of intelligence.

necovek 1mo ago

Incidentally, that's my favourite quote from Blaise Pascal: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/

asdfasvea 1mo ago
My favorite quote for 10 years was from my 1993 college math professor: You will never go wrong attributing a pithy quote to Benjamin Franklin or Mark Twain. And then the internet became popular.
- necovek 1mo ago
  I think your professor took that one from Franklin... or was it Mark Twain?
  - madcaptenor 1mo ago
    Franklin couldn't predict the future. It was Twain, saying you'd never go wrong attributing a quote to Franklin.
    - necovek 1mo ago
      Respecting a timeline only matters in some universes, and in the Universe of Quotes, it certainly does not!
- bookofjoe 1mo ago
  When I was in college I read: At a party, want to have people think you're really smart? If someone asks "Where's that [quote] from?" quickly respond "The Bible or Shakespeare." In English, you'll be right 50% of the time.
waynesonfire 1mo ago
If only the LLM coding zealots were aware of this wisdom.

deleted 1mo ago

[deleted]

cpt_sobel 1mo ago

Similarly I often read ticket or PR descriptions written by Claude that are so jargon-heavy that I just can't understand on first try. On one side it's a reality check because I always considered English to be close to a mother tongue for me, on the other side I never had to deal with words like "idempotent"... (Seriously, when did this become one of the go-to words to use?)

Modified3019 1mo ago
Idempotent is definitely a word that’s strangely awkward and alien to actually use, but makes reasonable sense when the etymology is known. The closest alternative I can think of is debouncing/debounced
interf4ce 1mo ago
Idempotency is a crucial trait in the world of web APIs (and any other system where commands that modify state might need to be retried due to communication failures). It's not a new word or concept, but it's certainly a niche one.
joshuahedlund 1mo ago
> jargon-heavy Yes. It’s even worse than jargon tho I think it just invents its own metaphors. At first I thought this was clever and useful, helping me to internalize the code (“the normal path vs the escape hatch”) but I’m increasingly finding the metaphors to be so thick and esoteric that it’s actually a hurdle to understanding the actual code.
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
FabHK 1mo ago
Also used in mathematics. A projection P is basically an idempotent mapping, that is P(P(x)) = P(x) for all x.

trashb 1mo ago

I find that this quote is not just applicable to writing of natural language like letters. It also applies to code, and is becoming more and more evident to me due to the use of AI. I believe the idea presented transcends writing actually. For example you could also apply it to painting or sculpting. I think this points to the character of creative thinking where one "chips" away at a subject until it is considered as finished.

WillAdams 1mo ago
The classic example of writing tight and efficient code is: https://folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html https://folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html

jonathanlydall 1mo ago

Yes, but it can be worth it as I've generally found that the most effective professional writing has your high-level request appear within the very first sentence. This is because it as quickly as possible puts the reader into the context of what you need from them making your rationalization of the request reinforce it, whereas if you try to rationalize before getting to your request a busy reader (think customer support, exec, manager) will be thinking "Okay, okay, okay, what are they getting to? Okay, okay, oh there we go finally I know, now let's consider their rationalization, maybe I should scroll up and re-read". I started doing this after having done email customer service many years ago, when you're expected to spend as little time as possible per support case, you will speed read their writing until you find the part which says what their issue is, for some emails this was paragraphs. A particularly memorable WoW case for me was something like this, but more verbose: "I finished the raid last night where we managed to down <boss name>, after we celebrated, I logged off. Then I woke up and went to school as usual, after getting home I tried logging on it showed a message saying I was banned, I was heart-broken as I've put so much time into the game and it means so much to me, so to find out why I logged into my Gmail and an email from you said I was banned due to <reason>." As a support person, all of that was completely irrelevant except for the part saying "I was banned due to <reason>" (which was commonly due account being compromised by a gold seller looting it and then auto-banned due to stuff they were doing on it). Something else which reinforced my view of "get to the point quickly" was an HN comment saying how they were once sent on a course on "how as an engineer to communicate effectively with execs" which apparently essentially stated "write your email as you normally would, then at the end take the last paragraph and put it at the top of the email". The rationale being that execs are typically only interested in reading a full email if it's actually relevant to them.

jodacola 1mo ago
This sounds a lot like the BLUF technique [0]. This is one of my favorite techniques in professional settings. I don't interpret this as contradictory to the OP's point and quote: in order to determine the most important first line, one must slow down to identify exactly what that is. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication)
1mo ago

bookofjoe 1mo ago

Classic Spanish proverb: "Vísteme despacio, que tengo prisa." Literally meaning "Dress me slowly, because I'm in a hurry."

stillpointlab 1mo ago

This brought to mind the often quoted assumption that intelligence and compression are intimately related. A well edited letter may therefore be a sign of intelligence.