I guess I would rather read an essay about how much caching improves product X than an essay saying that the developer of product X is an idiot for writing a product that needs caching. Both essays have the same factual content, but I admit to bias towards the former, especially from one programmer to another.
For me I just tend to take Jeff's tone with a grain of salt rather than expecting each post to be dispassionate analysis. Jeff simply doesn't vet his material the same way as PG, but we end up with more of it from which occasionally really good observations and discussions result.
The "shoot from the hip" comment was that while Spolsky might go over one of his showcase pieces 30-40 times, Atwood would look at it maybe once or twice while he was writing it and the hit "Publish".
I have a personality like Atwood -- if I'm mad about something, I immediately feel the urge to write a scathing and negative blog entry. Every time I do this, though, I get a lot of negative feedback. So, I try to tone down my personality and stick to instructional entires now, and amazingly I get positive feedback every time. Nobody cares what I think... but if they learn something, then my blog is worth reading.
"Show, don't tell." is what they teach in elementary school. It is a very valuable piece of advice. (In this case, I mean "show why foo is good", not "tell the reader that bar is bad". Criticism and snarkiness breads criticism and snarkiness.)
Wordpress is meant to make online publishing easy for non developers and it has to make sacrifices for flexibility. Wordpress serves most people very well and there are many high traffic sites running it. Surely he will be able to do the same for himself if he chooses to run Wordpress.
Well, I like a lot of what he writes (by a lot, I mean, "a lot of posts every year," not necessarily, "most of his posts.") I'm quite happy his posts aren't dispassionate. Shrug. I guess I'm being remarkably asymmetrical and patently unfair: I want his passion, it's just that this post is a necessary consequence of his style.