Hacker News Reader

I usually write these sort of titles because they amuse me rather than in the extreme hope of linkbaiting. I accept that writing for my own amusement has about as much value for others as laughing at my own jokes.

View on HN

It is a bit of a bait and switch, you don't let people know that you think it is a "damn good tool" until towards the end. I'm ultimately neutral on this. It sort of works to keep your audience engaged with your writing, but is a bit of a cheap trick to not put all your cards on the table until the end of the article.

Oh, and when you are writing you are almost always writing for an audience -- esp. when you tweet the result right afterwards and show up on Hacker News to discuss it.

I see that in addition to choosing a title that displeased you, in responding to you I failed to make it obvious that I agreed with you somewhat. I didn’t say I don’t write for an audience, I said that I selected the title for my own amusement, and that it would be better in some ways to refrain from enjoying my own little joke.

Nothing you have said is wrong.

For what it's worth, I saw the title on HN, then saw that it was a link to your githublogthing and guessed "aw, he's going to be cheeky and turn it around in the post by interpreting it literally." So I thought the title was clever.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com