Some Thoughts on Writing

!tags:: #lit✍/📰️article/highlights
!links:: blogging, writing,
!ref:: Some Thoughts on Writing
!author:: danluu.com

=this.file.name

Book cover of "Some Thoughts on Writing"

Reference

Notes

Quote

Everyone on this list has a different style in the following dimensions (as well as others): Topic selection Prose style Length Type of humor (if any) Level of technical detail Amount of supporting evidence Nuance
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- [note::Good dimensions to use when it comes to evaluating my own writing style.]

Quote

This pose implies that the writer has wide and textured experience; otherwise he would not be able to make such an observation. But none of that personal history, personal experience, or personal psychology enters into the expression. Instead the sentence crystallizes the writer’s experience into a timeless and absolute sequence, as if it were a geometric proof.
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Coming back to writing style, if you're trying to figure out what stylistic choices are right for you, you should start from your goals and what you're good at and go from there, not listen to somebody who's going to tell you to write like them.
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The more general issue is that a person who doesn't understand the thing they're trying to copy will end up copying unimportant superficial aspects of what somebody else is doing and miss the fundamentals that drive the superficial aspects.
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accelerate learning, especially for beginners who have no idea what to do, there isn't a shortcut to understanding something deeply enough to facilitate doing it well that can be summed up in simple rules, like "omit needless words"4.
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As a result, I view style as something that should fall out of your goals, and goals are ultimately a personal preference. Personally, some goals that I sometimes have are: Explain a technical topic that a lot of people don't seem to understand at a level that's accessible to almost any professional programmer Examples: branch prediction, malloc, cache partitioning Make a case for a minority opinion (or one that was a minority opinion at the time, anyway): Examples: files are difficult to use, public tech companies can pay very well, monorepos aren't stupid Measure something Discuss phenomena I think are interesting: Examples: funny discontinuities, the difficulty of knowledge transfer, normalization of deviance
- No location available
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- [note::Establish a goal for each thing you write e.g:

  1. Explain a technical topic that a lot of people don't seem to understand
  2. Make a case for a minority opinion
  3. Writing about a "big, if true" topic
  4. Discuss phenomena that are personally interesting]

Quote

There are a bunch of things I don't like in other blogs, so I try to avoid them. Some examples: Breaking up what could be a single post into a bunch of smaller posts Clickbait titles Repeatedly blogging about the same topic with nothing new to say A sub-category of this is having some kind of belief and then blogging about it every time a piece of evidence shows up that confirms the belief while not mentioning evidence that shows up that disconfirms the belief Not having an RSS or atom feed
- No location available
- creating a blog, blogging,

Quote

You can't trust someone else's platform to not disappear underneath you or radically change in the name of profit.
- No location available
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dg-publish: true
created: 2024-07-01
modified: 2024-07-01
title: Some Thoughts on Writing
source: hypothesis

!tags:: #lit✍/📰️article/highlights
!links:: blogging, writing,
!ref:: Some Thoughts on Writing
!author:: danluu.com

=this.file.name

Book cover of "Some Thoughts on Writing"

Reference

Notes

Quote

Everyone on this list has a different style in the following dimensions (as well as others): Topic selection Prose style Length Type of humor (if any) Level of technical detail Amount of supporting evidence Nuance
- No location available
-
- [note::Good dimensions to use when it comes to evaluating my own writing style.]

Quote

This pose implies that the writer has wide and textured experience; otherwise he would not be able to make such an observation. But none of that personal history, personal experience, or personal psychology enters into the expression. Instead the sentence crystallizes the writer’s experience into a timeless and absolute sequence, as if it were a geometric proof.
- No location available
-

Quote

Coming back to writing style, if you're trying to figure out what stylistic choices are right for you, you should start from your goals and what you're good at and go from there, not listen to somebody who's going to tell you to write like them.
- No location available
-

Quote

The more general issue is that a person who doesn't understand the thing they're trying to copy will end up copying unimportant superficial aspects of what somebody else is doing and miss the fundamentals that drive the superficial aspects.
- No location available
-

Quote

accelerate learning, especially for beginners who have no idea what to do, there isn't a shortcut to understanding something deeply enough to facilitate doing it well that can be summed up in simple rules, like "omit needless words"4.
- No location available
-

Quote

As a result, I view style as something that should fall out of your goals, and goals are ultimately a personal preference. Personally, some goals that I sometimes have are: Explain a technical topic that a lot of people don't seem to understand at a level that's accessible to almost any professional programmer Examples: branch prediction, malloc, cache partitioning Make a case for a minority opinion (or one that was a minority opinion at the time, anyway): Examples: files are difficult to use, public tech companies can pay very well, monorepos aren't stupid Measure something Discuss phenomena I think are interesting: Examples: funny discontinuities, the difficulty of knowledge transfer, normalization of deviance
- No location available
-
- [note::Establish a goal for each thing you write e.g:

  1. Explain a technical topic that a lot of people don't seem to understand
  2. Make a case for a minority opinion
  3. Writing about a "big, if true" topic
  4. Discuss phenomena that are personally interesting]

Quote

There are a bunch of things I don't like in other blogs, so I try to avoid them. Some examples: Breaking up what could be a single post into a bunch of smaller posts Clickbait titles Repeatedly blogging about the same topic with nothing new to say A sub-category of this is having some kind of belief and then blogging about it every time a piece of evidence shows up that confirms the belief while not mentioning evidence that shows up that disconfirms the belief Not having an RSS or atom feed
- No location available
- creating a blog, blogging,

Quote

You can't trust someone else's platform to not disappear underneath you or radically change in the name of profit.
- No location available
-