
Advice I Wish I'd Been Told (1999) - pmoriarty
http://web.archive.org/web/20090502012411/http://wwwstage.valpo.edu/english/vpr/mcdonaldessay.html
======
kolbe
I'm not knocking this article, but when original title is so vague and
clickbaity, would you mind filling in some more information in the HN
submission?

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vinchuco
TIL: A way to measure generality in texts
[http://research.create.usc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1...](http://research.create.usc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1100&context=nonpublished_reports)

Bad headlines (cryptic, general, and clickbaity) are common, not only in HN.
Is there a good solution? (good = better than moderators)

There have been more than a couple of TLDR applications/apps mentioned here
before.

~~~
pmoriarty
There is a relatively simple solution: tags

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vinchuco
Reminded me of a solution by one calculus student to an optimization problem:

"(...constraints...) How should the fence be built to minimize the cost of the
fence?"

Student answer: Don't build it. Cost=0.

Sounds almost like a Koan.

~~~
tacostakohashi
Answer: Make Mexico pay for the fence.

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Kluny
It's probably irrelevant to HackerNews, but whatever. Thanks, it's exactly
what I needed today. I've been telling myself to write clearly, directly, and
in utilitarian language for so long that I almost forgot the love of language.

~~~
vinchuco
>Irrelevant

Not quite
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Thought: recommendation engine based on your upvote profile?

~~~
vvvv
Vehemently no. I enjoy the unfiltered, random view and don't want somebody
else deciding how to tweak the personalisation algorithm.

~~~
bnegreve
HN _is_ filtered. The main page is a list of article which have been selected
and upvoted by small unrepresentative subset of the population. I agree that
it's not personalized though.

~~~
hueving
>HN is filtered.

Not relative to what everyone else is seeing.

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d23
I'm glad this sort of lateral-thinking-esque thing can still make it to the
front page. I don't write poetry, but this seems serendipitously related to
other things I've been thinking about.

I've been getting into lifting weights a lot over the last year, and something
I read recently changed the way I've started performing the exercises. I've
started focusing more on the movements I'm doing, resisting the lazy desire to
just go through the motions. It seems to me to be a kind of "avoiding the
abstraction," instead lasering in on what's actually going on with my body. It
has the tendency to bring out an ecstatic state as well, which is a nice
bonus. It feels like a much deeper relationship with the thing I'm doing.

~~~
lexhaynes
That deep attention to what you are doing sounds like "flow" \-- Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi's concept of optimal experience. See his talk here:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow?lan...](http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow?language=en)

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sergiotapia
[Writing] advice I wish I'd been told.

~~~
mjevans
They wrote about advice for writers, but with a grain of salt this seems
apropos to any creative art, design and construction of digital systems
included.

~~~
the_other
Whilst reading, I wondered how the first guidance, "avoid abstraction", could
apply to creating programmes, especially in commercial settings.

"Purple", "poetic" or "tangental" function, variable and class names litter my
personal projects. I enjoy coming up with these things immensely, at the time.
Often, later, I rename them to more directly communicate their intended use.
Which way exhibits "better" poetry?

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david90
That also applies to life and whenever you try to create anything.

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emmelaich
Is the hyphen meant to be there in "ab-stracted" ?

Or is it some artifact of publishing perhaps?

If it is meant to be there what do people think is intended by it? Just to
emphasise it? Something else?

(also, no need to use archive.org; the original is now at
[http://www.valpo.edu/vpr/mcdonaldessay.html](http://www.valpo.edu/vpr/mcdonaldessay.html))

~~~
csallen
In the archive.org version, the word "abstracted" is broken across two lines.
That's why there's a hyphen.

~~~
emmelaich
Thanks but it's not for me; it's on a single line in both.

So .. some publishing/web artifact as I supposed.

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cycomachead
I skipped over the first paragraph as was semi-confused to see "Resist
Abstractions" as point #1 in a HN article.

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cgio
* A poem works best, for me, when the writer doesn't tell, but when he or she invents combinations of specific words to show us old facts in new ways. *

I have a similar saying for philosophy; that it is to put the wrong words in
the right order. I guess it applies to poetry too, or only.

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yolesaber
Advice about writing is oft written in some of the most purple and
interminable prose. This article is no different.

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Numberwang
Buy Google stock would have been Good advice then.

