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Comment by rrgok | Hacker News Reader

At the risk of getting downvoted to hell. I'm getting nauseated with all this "writing this...", "writing that..." and overall note-taking related topics. It is kinda worse than AI, because at least with AI I can read people getting fed up with it. With writing, nobody dares to say anything negative about it. Only praise. I really wish someone takes the time to write the negatives of "Writing as a form thinking...". Something like "Write as a form a wasting time" or better "Writing as a form of deluding oneself in being productive". It might be me, but I think writing is overrated, moreover in HN. The people around me, mostly don't care about writing other than code. If writing helps you, fine do it. I'm not against it.

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I would rather read your writing about the mental model or problem solving, problem definition, data structures you solved with your code than the code itself.

mpweiher: "Show me your flowchart and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowchart; it'll be obvious."

Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man Month

If I understand the problem your code solves, then I can probably understand the words you use to describe the solution to that problem and therefore understand the steps your code takes to implement that solution.

Documentation is underrated.

A well documented codebase is one that doesn't tell you what the code does (the code tells you what the code does in minute detail) but tells you the problem and the solution the code is solving. Please tell me what the code does from a problem solving perspective.

If I can't understand your code, then your code is legacy to me unfortunately. Tell me the problem and mental model the code is implementing and I can rewrite it or avoid rewriting it because I have your implementation, I understand it and I don't need to rewrite it.

Writing a journal or articles is a lot like rubber-ducking. It gives you time and space to think about the subject more deeply, reach new conclusions, and compartmentalize a topic. Thinking about something also makes you learn it better and connect it with more concepts in your head.

There are very few people who regularly write as an exercise in thinking, though. But there are very few who would not benefit from it.

At the risk of being rude, what you're saying from some perspectives may read like "exercise this...", "exercise that..." and how no one dares to speak out against physical exercise. Well... that may be because it's mostly universally good for people (with definite exceptions). Writing is like exercise for the mind. Are there other ways to achieve most things than exercising your body or your mind? Yeah, I would say so - there are many paths to success, knowledge, wisdom, balance, expertise, wealth, and so on. But is exercise of the mind bad or detrimental? Generally, no. And that's why few people speak out against it.

> I think writing is overrated

I'm not sure what real good a downvote can serve. I will make an appeal to your understanding of human history.

Writing is a representation of language, and as such is the greatest, clearest manifestation of generalised human intellectual capacity. Writing as a technical achievement is the foundation of human civilisation.

> moreover in HN. The people around me, mostly don't care about writing other than code.

The best coders are coding for others to understand. In the great tradition of human writing, coding is communication.

> "Writing as a form thinking..."

> "Write as a form a wasting time"

> "Writing as a form of deluding oneself in being productive"

Hmm.

> writing is overrated

Take this kindly - you're doing it wrong. Which is fine; not everyone is a wordy thinker. That doesn't mean it's overrated.

I think the lack of such opinions is the answer you're possibly refusing to accept.

The entirety of my experience with writing things down is that it is only ever helpful and useful in the understanding of a problem or the exploration of an idea.

I don't often look back at what I wrote. Partly that's because the process of writing helps me to remember something, and also the writing is the journey required to tech the destination, and once at the destination, the journey is no longer needed.

And yes, if there is an "other side" of the writing argument, I'm not in it, so I appreciate these posts, and generally nod in agreement. I also appreciate them as a reminder to both write more and more often.

You might be interested in reading Socrates (Plato):

https://newlearningonline.com/literacies/chapter-1/socrates-...

Thank you for sharing this.

I like to read insight into people's thinking who normally are not writers, they provide interesting meta insight, democratize in a easy way to publish.

I recently learned writing is two things, what you know and how to market yourself. While I'd say a good amount is more of the former, HN highlights some of the absolute best pieces of the prior.

People should write. And those that touch a nerve probably did it well enough do receive critical feedback.

You're assuming that just because it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for anybody, and that's obviously not true. Writing is exercise for the brain, it's a fact that this is a good thing for you. You just might not personally need this exercise to function properly, but many do.

There is always too much of X, and if X works for one person it might not work for someone else, people are different. Truly, writing didn’t become valuable to me until grad school, when people would actually read what I wrote. I don’t see much point in writing to myself, I at least have to think that I might have an audience to explain something to, so private journals or diaries aren’t really useful aids for me, but other people have different preferences.

I would love to find a replacement to natural language writing for organizing and developing thoughts, one that was more structured and could be manipulated systematically. A programming language for thinking I guess.

I suspect that those who share your viewpoint would mostly not be writers in the first place, and as such, wouldn't write about it to share their viewpoint. So you have a closed loop feedback system. Only writers write about writing, and only those who like writing write.

I don't disagree with your ideas that it can be counter-productive. However, I'm not convinced that would be the majority perspective. I think the reason why it's not spoken about much is because there's no enforcing others to become writers. It's an individual choice and usually only affects yourself.

I hate talking about votes, but I upvoted your comment for the excellent responses it provided. Curious if you have any thoughts on them.

I think your central issue isn’t with writing in of itself, as the surplus of extraneous pointless vacuous writing that is out these days. Social media posts, tweets, content farming blogs, fake-FAQs, carousel listicles, comments comments comments- are surrounded by so much bad, pre-AI analog AI generated writing or quick takes written without deep thought. That’s what you probably have issues with, not with writing itself.

Because writing, like exercise, really is a boon. It would be strange to go on about its deleterious effects. It'd seem like looking for an indirect excuse to not engage in something that's challenging and good for you.

Do you see any irony in the fact that you're voicing your disagreement... in writing?

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