Intolerance for long form writing is relatively new and an outcome of the Internet shortening attention spans.

I used to do some long form writing and I still remember feeling offended when I first got “too long didn’t read” comments.

Long-form writing is fine as long as you have something to say. The best thing to come out of the article was the title, unfortunately.

There is a book on this very topic called 'The Shallows' by Nicholas Carr

> Intolerance for long form writing is relatively new and an outcome of the Internet shortening attention spans.

Do you have any evidence for this? It sounds like a typical reactionary take on new technology.

Because information throughput was much lower.

Sending a letter would take weeks, so it was important to make it count. Newspapers with long articles made more sense when anything written was much more expensive.

Long form is good when it helps the story and helps the story.

The problem I had with this story, besides that I don't think I buy the model of reality it's proposing, is that it doesn't get to the meat(The Expert Beginner) until past the halfway mark. The first 7 minutes wasn't particularly interesting or critical to someone understanding the subject. The bowling analogy was long and not necessary to explain a very straight forward idea.

From what I can tell, a "low hanging fruit" analogy would have been more apt and would have taken a short paragraph to preface the main content.

That aside, there are some reasons I have to not agree with the article.

Not to discredit the author's experience but, in my experience, I just haven't met anyone who believes they have reached expert status but is still a beginner. Pretty much every programmer I've met has some degree of imposter syndrome and, while most have some opinions about what makes "good code", I don't find it common that programmers have a strong belief in their own expertise. Totally subjective, I know, but that's one way in which the story just doesn't reflect my view of reality.

> They come to the conclusion that they’ve quickly reached Expert status and there’s nowhere left to go.

I just don't think I've met any programmer who thinks there's nowhere left to go once they've achieved a perceived status.

Moreover, the end of the story seems to conclude that "expert beginners" are the problem, as opposed to the symptom, although the author does recognize that somewhat via the "dead sea" effect. Looking at this from an economics perspective, the so-called expert beginners are the way they are because they're not incentivized to do better. If there was economic and internal political pressure for them to achieve supposedly greater things, they'd be more likely to do so. Having worked for some "dead sea" companies, I have to wonder why any beginner would want to effectively work harder for a company that pays an intermediate salary, makes advancement difficult, and does not reward excellence. The choice to dick around, not spend energy improving, maintaining the appearance of experthood having "worked on that tool" or having been around the longest, while collecting a reliable paycheck, is the most sensible one for those who don't live and breathe code.

The article comes from the angle of someone who lives and breathes code, blaming the programmers who aren't true believers, and leaves out the fact that the supposedly better programmers don't stick around to fix these situations.

My point is that you could turn the article around on itself to say that the "dead sea" problem, and the problem of "expert beginners" lingering at companies, is at least significantly caused by actual expert programmers.

> I just want to encourage better ways of writing, thinking, and publishing.

You could use more encouraging language. Phrases like "I don't care" and "[don't] have time for bullshit" make it seem exactly like you're trying to be negative.

I'm not trying to say anything, I just want to make you do better.

Always consider people who are different to you. Maybe they have so little time for bullshit they won't even bother being negative about someone else's writings from 8 years ago.

If one can't describe their thesis in 3-4 sentences, they will not be able to do it in a paper/book.

The author of that article clearly can describe his thesis in 3-4 sentences. He does so on the middle of the text.

But he decided not to add a summary at the beginning of the article. This is a perfectly valid option and helps him making his point, even though it did reduce his audience.

Despite couching your comment in the trappings of polite language, it's anything but polite.

Go argue with Plato.

The problem is with your attention span, dude, and you'll do better if you can adapt yourself and demand less of others.

I actually thought there was a lot of substance to the article, but I also watch 45 minute video essays about movies ... so attention spans might vary

The blog post is famous in technical circles. I’ve seen it cited about as much as some of Joel Spolsky’s most famous posts.

Another one from you tube generation I guess.