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Early on, when I found HN and began to participate beyond reading, this subject came up. "why do you write like that?" Saw that question a few times, and probably answered it a time or two with this kind of information. I would have most likely said something about readability and style preference. Both are true today. And there is one other subtle observation that may be germane: There is a difference between writing in the text input window directly and doing the same thing elsewhere, then copy pasting it into the text input window. In terms of your experience, nothing changes. Some rando and ideally, normie, or not nefarious at a minimum, person on the Internet input some text for you to potentially read. On the writers end, and for me in particular, it's subtle but using the window directly seems more immediate, live, raw. Essentially, it feels a bit more like writing to you, even though it's really a public discussion where any passersby can and do read and optionally participate. Technically, it is all the same. Request input session or use one provided in advance, type on keyboard, use various controls to finalize and communicate the input, done, next. Context really does seem to matter. A similar thing happens when I fire up a very old computer. Sometimes I will choose to write on my old Apple //e and a bit different voice comes out, sometimes notably. That machine comes with decades of context, memories, it's own lean UX, monospaced font, keyboard very different from most I use today, and in my case writing in the character display mode I prefer on that machine rather than in the general graphics mode where more font options are available. I'm including this largely to support the idea of the strong UX differences possible today having implications very large numbers of us will not just ignore, but will also adapt to. And, of course, as a curio for those passersby who may find that all thought provoking. |