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Comment by skybrian | Hacker News Reader

One difference (in this article at least) is that there are no jokes or unnecessary cultural references.

Another might be called moral clarity. Unfortunately, it's usually an illusion. We have much more experience with technologies invented under optimistic assumptions turning out to be a moral gray area at best, when you look at how they're used.

I found this paper interesting:

The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/papers/moral-fn.pdf

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I'd put "jokes" and "cultural references" together under "tone". Recent articles often feel like they're trying to catch the attention of children. There are lots of "candies" to make you read: pictures, GIFs, jokes, an attention grabbing title, colors, emojis, a friendly tone, lots of exclamation marks. On the other hand, that article is mostly black on white text, that's plain in a good way.

I especially hate this "corporate fun" style when it's a big tech repository where each bullet point of a list is replaced by an emoji.

I really have a hard time with emojis outside of communications. Either they are saying something that was already said by the word or words before, and in that case they are useless, or they replace a word and make text harder to read. I also really don't like the concept of making objects into emojis, as we already have words to describre that, and emojis reflect a very limited world. For example, if you look at the food emojis, this is basically "I live in San Francisco and all of the food I get is from restaurants". I think I've heard it described one day as "the world of people that live in airports", and that fits well.

That's because young people have very short attention span and they must be fed with instant gratifications all the time to continue reading. Those "candies" are targeted at them.

Is it really just young people?

Don’t old people who sit in front of the news get a similar rush?

That was my experience working with developers of different ages. Those who were born before 1995-2000 year are fine spending hours focusing on books. Those who were born after, prefer to learn from short engaging videos. I don't judge anyone, that's just my observations, I don't claim if one method is better than the other.

Where do you get that? Do you mean software developers specifically?

No those "candies" are to create feeling that you are peers and that it is informal communication.

That is why most people like movies made by Quentin Tarantino and not by Andrei Tarkovsky.

I don't like when someone puts memes in each paragraph but at the same time I don't like to read "guru on a high horse" that comes like he is a smart ass because he pretends to be professional and all that.

I think both types of candies can coexist. If someone makes a joke, it's probably to grab your attention. If someone talks about politics, it's probably to signal something to their peers. If someone uses the last marvel as an example, it's probably a bit of both.

> I don't like when someone puts memes in each paragraph but at the same time I don't like to read "guru on a high horse" that comes like he is a smart ass because he pretends to be professional and all that.

That's fair, I don't like this style too. Which is why I like to describe what I like as "plain English". I'd say the characteristic is that the content is mostly information, and not signalling or entertainment.

I think you are biased, and falling to the age-old "young/old people bad" where young/old is picked on which one you are not

Commodari E, Guarnera M. Attention and aging. Aging Clin Exp Res. 2008 Dec;20(6):578-84. doi: 10.1007/BF03324887. PMID: 19179843.

I don't think they are targeted only to them. The short attention span can be a thing, although I'm not sure it's generational. For example, the usual newspaper has a lot of small articles).

On the other hand, part of the candies is to reassure your audience and try to bring them to you with something else than your content. That part applies to everyone, regardless of their age. For example, if you do a blog post on a programming technique, you could try to brand it (and yourself) as "software craftsmanship", insert a few references to people in that space, add a few paragraphs talking mostly about this ideology and not the content. Or you could use a lot of examples, references and jokes from something cultural (the current popular thing on netflix for example). These "candies" aren't targeted at people with short attention span.

> [...] young people have [...]

I hope you will forgive me for saying this but every generation leverages criticism on preceding generations for some perceived flaw. When you look back at other similar criticisms it generally can be seen as very overblown. I think in this case it's fair to say that this is not something that must be done to them, it's just something that is done to them. When you get used to something, that's what you like - it's not an intrinsic trait like you're making it seem.

It's the recurring critique on my blog posts: that there is too much text and too little pictorial content. I'm not going to change anything because of that but it is interesting how you have identified this as a good thing when the bulk of the feedback that I get about this is negative.

I've just read "Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano" from your blog. I like it. There is a video to show everything, and a direct link to the software. The tone is what I called "plain in a good way" in my comment, it's mostly information organized logically. I wish more blogs were like yours.

Thank you! The software has come a very long way since that first blog post (and so have my piano playing skills :) ).

> One difference (in this article at least) is that there are no jokes or unnecessary cultural references. As someone who started his professional career in the mid 90s, working in what we now call cyber security, and having written both then and after a long gap… now. I was initially baffled and then somewhat put-off by the way style has changed between say 2000 and 2010. First I put it down to just being older. Then I wondered if authors were encouraged to “put more of you” into writing (which I am not a fan of unless you are explicitly writing autobiographically). Part of “bring your whole self to work”? Then I wondered if it was just an attempt to add colour to what may be a rather dry subject for anyone other than those working in our niche. Finally I thought that perhaps it was something a little more profound. A desire by the author to connect at some deeper level than the dry content, with an audience, a tribe if you will.

All those "jokes" are exhausting. I usually don't have the energy to finish reading an article. I assumed it was a problem with myself, lack of attention. Until some day I read an article from beginning to end, it was captivating. I found that weird, then I checked the date of the article: 1950.

Link? :D <- Emoticon for the short of attention span.

Honestly, I know it's popular to cast these things as 'Gen Z, kids these days don't know how it used to be'....but I know this 51 year old guy doesn't have near the attention span reading that he used to.

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