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clwk | 5 years ago | on: Write Simply

It’s more that the former book sets a very high bar I don’t think he clears in the attempt to make the topic more accessible.

clwk | 5 years ago | on: Write Simply

I couldn't get through Pinker's book. He cites 'Clear and Simple as the Truth' as inspiration, but his acorn falls so far from the tree.

clwk | 5 years ago | on: Write Simply

I think we have Hemingway to blame for this meme. I wonder why so very many authors feel the need to explicitly write these 'simple ode to simplicity' pieces — where each sentence in the exhortation has itself been optimized iteratively until no waste remains, so no lexical pixel has gone to waste. Sentences like 'Simple writing also lasts better,' are the unfortunate artifacts of this process. These are like the Teslas of brevity-pornographers: a mere five words attesting to hours of careful whittling; a praise-worthy awkwardness that could never have been produced on a native-speaker's first try.

clwk | 5 years ago | on: My Life in Cars

> with the exception of New Hampshire, which does not have a law requiring people over age 18 to wear a seat belt

In fairness, the state motto is 'Live free or die.'

clwk | 5 years ago | on: Candy Land was invented for polio wards (2019)

Sorry has enough decisions for children to discover that it’s not just luck, though. You certainly can play to lose if you want to, for example. Discovering that there is strategy within what seems mostly luck is actually useful for learners.

clwk | 5 years ago | on: If someone asks if you have any questions, ask a question

Thanks for the response. It's valuable that they gave you detailed feedback. The post would be strengthened by enough specifics grounded in that actual feedback to have preempted my response. In any case, I appreciate the conversation.

My comment here should not be read as a personal judgment. It's more of a literary critique of your article as instance of a genre—with an extra helping of editorial critique of that genre.

clwk | 5 years ago | on: If someone asks if you have any questions, ask a question

This reads as an extended justification for how the author could possibly have failed. He writes as though it must be as simple as 'just should have asked a question'. It's an odd conclusion which communicates its own set of assumptions. It reminds me of people who claim, in all seriousness, that they can always spot X intangible characteristic — without any justification for how they determine their false positive/negative rate in that judgment. This undoubtedly reflects my bias, but I find many (bordering or even definitely including most) 'humble' blog posts to do this; and that is perhaps a further riff on the kind of canned advice we see here. They tend to read, to me, like answers to the interview questions, "Tell me about a time you failed," or, "What is your greatest weakness?" In this case, all the author really reports is that he did extremely poorly relative to his expectations — but he manages to spin it into a maxim. If even someone as qualified as he could be unseated by this tactical error, it surely bears memorializing as advice worth living by.

clwk | 6 years ago | on: Clojure for the Erlang VM

A quick plug for LFE and its very simple premise: in mortal fear of Rails, I embraced the potential of Elixir (with 100% more Phoenix); I had a wonderful test case for macros (can't even remember what it was anymore); I spent hours trying to craft it and fought, fought, fought the AST/syntax/complexity; finally, in anger remembered the mere existence of LFE and its promise of DEFMACRO.

I wrote my first vaguely non-trivial LFE program as a macro in the REPL as a guess, and it worked on the first try.

If I need a lisp in BEAM, I would run with LFE on that alone.

clwk | 6 years ago | on: Differences between expert and novice brains in mice: study

The version of this I first heard in school was:

He knows not and knows not that he knows not is fool. Shun him.

He who knows not and knows that he knows not is a student. Teach him.

He who knows and knows not that he knows is asleep. Wake him.

He who knows and knows that he knows is wise. Follow him.

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