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Comment by mcphage | Hacker News Reader

He’s got a book of short stories, which seem related to or variants of some of these, called “The Dragons of Crumbling Castle”, written while he was younger. And the same thing this article says applies to that book as well—some of them are good, some you see the hint of humor that he later hones, but on the whole, they’re not that strong.

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That goes for any writer. Take the complete works of Lovecraft, for example, because they fit in one thick volume.

The ones at the beginning are ... skippable. But then he perfected his style.

Any artist, or even craftsman in general. You only judge people by their masterpiece's standard. So anything lower will always have that meh feeling.

I think that's generally true, but it can still be interesting to see early works from people who go on to hone their crafts. Sometimes just seeing how they progressed is worthwhile, sometimes the unpolished nature can emphasize brilliance, and sometimes the unintentional breaks from convention have engaging effects of their own.

And "Dragons of Crumbling Castle" is good for that. Like thinking of one of the stories in particular, is very clearly the kind of humor that he perfected in Discworld. But it's just too much, it's not sharp enough. It's a broad blade which he later turns into a scalpel.

And they're not bad stories, just most are a bit dull. There was one I especially loved though, so I'm glad I read them, and my kids liked them as I was reading them out loud.

It's interesting because the idea that they hone their craft is in contrast with the other author aphorism that "you have your whole life to write your first novel, and one year to write your second".

I wonder if the ideas in the early works are any more interesting or creative, but just not written as well.

I think this tension between planning and upfront design on the one hand and just executing something* on the other applies to software engineering as well.

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