[cormacrelf]

I’ve seen this guy’s posts a few times lately, he needs to learn to edit things down. What he’s saying is good, but it is extremely digressive, and the digressions never seem to return to the original point. I’m not the audience for this so I don’t have that much time to spare reading it, but I can’t imagine that style working well for an introduction to a language.

[fasterthanlime]

I respectfully disagree but - can't make everybody happy.

There's plenty of introductory articles to Rust in the style you desire :)

edit:

To expand a little bit, the digressions aren't just about me "getting distracted" while writing - they're very much on purpose. I always try and write pieces that expand in many different directions, because there's so much to discover, always.

Some folks come to an article wondering why Rust has two string types and end up spending an hour on Wikipedia reading about legacy code pages - and I think that's great.

My way of getting people interested in something is never a top-down, present-the-bare-minimum way, it's always about showing how what we're discussing is connected to a lot of other things, which are also fascinating and that you should check out if you want!

[cormacrelf]

I think I'm talking more about your Mr Golang piece, but now that I have your ear, I guess may as well. I am less concerned with the existence of digressions than the way they're introduced. When I say needs editing, I mean that because I cannot navigate the piece properly, it takes longer to understand what you're getting at if I want to, so it seems like it's too long. Editing down is only one solution to that.

An example of this is when I was really confused reading about path extensions and non-UTF8 paths. I was promised by Cool Bear that you had a point to make using an example about a stat call, but you were no longer talking about stat, and yet you were still writing as if it was central to your stat discussion. So instead of expanding, I thought you just couldn't express what was wrong with the stat call. I nearly gave up waiting! And I was surprised that, in the end, you could (and put it quite well). Unfortunately, there are thousands of thinkpieces out there that never make the point they promise to, instead just dumping information at you and hoping it hits you like it hit them. So I am trained to close the tab when that is happening.

It might help to state why you're going to digress before you do, with a promise to return, so that people who are hooked can be confident you'll eventually make your point (and may skip back and forth to digest your argument again without interruption). If nothing else, you are making a promise to yourself to structure things in a way that is friendly to the reader.

Rather than making the piece less exploratory, adding signposting helps get the reader into the mindset you describe in the last sentence there. Otherwise, they are not sure whether to be interpreting what you're saying as a core argument or some side discussion. It hurts both the exploratory and the argumentative qualities of the writing if one is confused for the other. Without making it clear, the argument runs like my first para above: unnecessarily long-winded and questionably relevant, with no exploratory levity. With good signposting, you get to nail both. It's about two sentences' and two headings' difference, maybe a little shuffling around.

Hope that helps, looking forward to your next one.

[fasterthanlime]

The Golang piece is definitely subpar, it was quickly thrown together in half a day, didn't expect it to be spread so widely haha.

For other articles there's usually a few days of research, and 1.5 days of writing and editing, then a lot of touch-ups in the following weeks/months responding to feedback.

Thanks for the more detailed criticism though - I agree with the general sentiment, and haven't solved the navigation problem yet!