I enjoy his posts, though apparently they aren't for everyone.

Oh, I enjoyed the post.. I was more commenting about the style of the presentation. There's many ways to break up a wall of text into brain-compilable sections. Joel on Software has an article that mentions one or two. http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000033.html

All the writing style and organization in the world is only to get people to read something. If he's gotten you to read it, and you will continue to read what he writes next, he doesn't need to work on all that stuff anymore.

Organization isn't to make the reader's life easier. Making sense of what one reads is largely an introspective activity. No matter how well-organized it is, you the reader have to regurgitate into a form suitable for yourself before you can digest it. This is called active reading.

I don't find "walls of text" at all forbidding, as long as the line width isn't too long. I also find Joel's argument on this point a bit dubious:

When was the last time you noticed a popular magazine or newspaper with entire pages of text?

True, but books do it all the time---as does Joel's essay, except for the gratuitous pull quote in the very section under discussion.

He's just too verbose. If the content took 40% of the words I'd be interested.

But a lot of the other words make it entertaining. Cutting it down to a few power-point slides full of bullets would be a lot more concise, but also boring (and therefore less effective).

Completely agree. Yegge writes a lot, but it's well-paced if you have the time to read it. When he makes a new post I generally set aside some time to read it in its entirety in one sitting.

That's excellent, thanks very much. I'm also reminded of

Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte. -- Blaise Pascal, Lettres provinciales, letter 16, 1657. (I am sorry for the length of my letter, but I had not the time to write a short one.)

Paul, I agree it needs to attract, entertain, and hold the reader but feel the verbosity is laziness in editing rather than style.

I agree it's laziness but I think it's a win for us. If he had to spend weeks instead of hours writing these posts he might not publish anything at all. Those of us willing to wade through his stuff get lots of value for a reasonable cost.

My understanding is that PG spends weeks writing and editing his longer essays. The result is obviously much more solid and digestible, but I'd definitely trade some of that solidity for more quantity. That might be key the difference between a blogger and an essayist.

He doesn't break any of the rules too badly, I don't think. He isn't using large words, or convoluted sentences. He's just saying things perhaps you don't find interesting.

Well, the post is about what's necessary for a programmer to know. So your question "is it necessary?" is answered in Steve's post :)