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I wish this didn't have so many exclamation points in it! There are literally 41 (!!!) exclamation points in this short blog post! It is exhausting to read! Ple

I wish this didn't have so many exclamation points in it! There are literally 41 (!!!) exclamation points in this short blog post! It is exhausting to read! Please consider not using so many! There should be ways to convey enthusiasm about a topic without peppering your writing with exclamation points!

amonette 12y ago
Incidentally, Julia's use of exclamation points in her blog actually inspired the name of a programming conference: http://bangbangcon.com/ http://bangbangcon.com/
tptacek 12y ago
We're discussing a pretty solid technical article, one deeper than the typical HN programming article, and this is a very superficial criticism. It's like you're proudly advertising that you're so disengaged with executable file formats that you can be derailed by idiosyncratic punctuation.
- krick 12y ago
  > pretty solid technical article, one deeper than the typical HN programming article Wow. Seriously? I'm kinda surprised to hear it from you.
  - rubiquity 12y ago
    Why? It's true. 90% of programming articles lately are "Check out my port of <some marginally interesting library> to Go!" Julia does awesome work and is kind enough to break things down and share them with us.
    - krick 12y ago
      Well, it's true that average HN article level may be somewhat low, but this one is just telling stuff that every 1-year CS student should know without actually going into details. "ELF is a file format like any other, and you can read it" — I hope everybody knew that, right? "There exist static and dynamic linking" should be quite widely known as well. But when it comes close to something actually interesting — "_start <..> does a bunch of Very Important Things that I don’t understand very well, <..> so I won’t explain them." What's the point then? I'm not saying that article is bad, actually I believe that it can be useful for somebody, because there are some who doesn't know what computer program is even to this extent, but I'm merely surprised that somebody presumably competent would call such an superficial article "deep".
      - tptacek 12y ago
        2/3rds of all bad nerd programming message board comments seem, for some reason, to start with "every 1-year CS student should know...". No, they don't. Thinking that they do suggests to me that you're still in school (at least emotionally), because technology is vast, everybody specializes somehow, and not everything you crammed for in CS 100 remains memory resident and actionable once you're actually working. I work in software security, where file formats are especially relevant; I write a new debugger an average of once a year. This was a good post. And file formats are in fact arcana to most working programmers, as I've learned by actually having conversations with working programmers that touched on how executable loaders work.
        krick 12y ago
        I know that you work in software security, that's why I'm surprised in the first place. In the other case I wouldn't comment at all, because, as I said, I don't think article is bad or good. It's superficial, but nothing new here. It's ok to write superficial articles, because they are useful for somebody as well. The word "deep" is what worried me, not the article itself. It's perfectly natural that not everyone knows how exactly executable loaders work. The same goes for what you called "file formats". That article isn't about that, because, as I said, all interesting parts are skipped. All the facts revealed are that computer executes some files, that are not arcane magic inside, but can be read and decompiled (which isn't even always true, but author doesn't mention it as well, which is natural). Static and dynamic linking are terms everyone should know as well, because even if you use only interpreted languages like Python, once in a while you find some library that requires manual compilation and run into all these nasty problems like required library versions don't match. Or maybe you could notice that the same Qt app compiled for Windows takes a lot more space on the disk than that does when compiled for Linux and ask yourself why. So, it isn't something that only specialists know, it's a basic fact about how computers work. I don't know about today, but 15 years ago you couldn't be considered programmer without knowing that much at least. It's surprising to hear that it is considered deep.
        dinkumthinkum 12y ago
- daffodil2 12y ago
  I'm actually very interested, which is why I bothered to comment in the first place. I had to download the HTML of the article and search and replace all exclamation points with periods to be able to read it.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    That is a crippling disability you're grappling with and I am sorry I made light of it.
jasonkostempski 12y ago
I like them. I'd imagine that's how I'd feel as I hit those "a ha" moments while demystifying something. There's so many because the article is only covering those moments, which is another nice feature.

amonette 12y ago

Incidentally, Julia's use of exclamation points in her blog actually inspired the name of a programming conference: http://bangbangcon.com/ http://bangbangcon.com/

tptacek 12y ago

We're discussing a pretty solid technical article, one deeper than the typical HN programming article, and this is a very superficial criticism. It's like you're proudly advertising that you're so disengaged with executable file formats that you can be derailed by idiosyncratic punctuation.

krick 12y ago
> pretty solid technical article, one deeper than the typical HN programming article Wow. Seriously? I'm kinda surprised to hear it from you.
- rubiquity 12y ago
  Why? It's true. 90% of programming articles lately are "Check out my port of <some marginally interesting library> to Go!" Julia does awesome work and is kind enough to break things down and share them with us.
  - krick 12y ago
    Well, it's true that average HN article level may be somewhat low, but this one is just telling stuff that every 1-year CS student should know without actually going into details. "ELF is a file format like any other, and you can read it" — I hope everybody knew that, right? "There exist static and dynamic linking" should be quite widely known as well. But when it comes close to something actually interesting — "_start <..> does a bunch of Very Important Things that I don’t understand very well, <..> so I won’t explain them." What's the point then? I'm not saying that article is bad, actually I believe that it can be useful for somebody, because there are some who doesn't know what computer program is even to this extent, but I'm merely surprised that somebody presumably competent would call such an superficial article "deep".
    - tptacek 12y ago
      2/3rds of all bad nerd programming message board comments seem, for some reason, to start with "every 1-year CS student should know...". No, they don't. Thinking that they do suggests to me that you're still in school (at least emotionally), because technology is vast, everybody specializes somehow, and not everything you crammed for in CS 100 remains memory resident and actionable once you're actually working. I work in software security, where file formats are especially relevant; I write a new debugger an average of once a year. This was a good post. And file formats are in fact arcana to most working programmers, as I've learned by actually having conversations with working programmers that touched on how executable loaders work.
      - krick 12y ago
        I know that you work in software security, that's why I'm surprised in the first place. In the other case I wouldn't comment at all, because, as I said, I don't think article is bad or good. It's superficial, but nothing new here. It's ok to write superficial articles, because they are useful for somebody as well. The word "deep" is what worried me, not the article itself. It's perfectly natural that not everyone knows how exactly executable loaders work. The same goes for what you called "file formats". That article isn't about that, because, as I said, all interesting parts are skipped. All the facts revealed are that computer executes some files, that are not arcane magic inside, but can be read and decompiled (which isn't even always true, but author doesn't mention it as well, which is natural). Static and dynamic linking are terms everyone should know as well, because even if you use only interpreted languages like Python, once in a while you find some library that requires manual compilation and run into all these nasty problems like required library versions don't match. Or maybe you could notice that the same Qt app compiled for Windows takes a lot more space on the disk than that does when compiled for Linux and ask yourself why. So, it isn't something that only specialists know, it's a basic fact about how computers work. I don't know about today, but 15 years ago you couldn't be considered programmer without knowing that much at least. It's surprising to hear that it is considered deep.
        dinkumthinkum 12y ago
daffodil2 12y ago
I'm actually very interested, which is why I bothered to comment in the first place. I had to download the HTML of the article and search and replace all exclamation points with periods to be able to read it.
- tptacek 12y ago
  That is a crippling disability you're grappling with and I am sorry I made light of it.

jasonkostempski 12y ago

I like them. I'd imagine that's how I'd feel as I hit those "a ha" moments while demystifying something. There's so many because the article is only covering those moments, which is another nice feature.