> The most important advice I ever received on writing was from a fellow named Bernie Avishai, a great writer/editor and friend, to whom I was complaining about how much editing my writing took. He observed that the reason that I was complaining about editing was that I probably believed that I thought in order to write. My response was “Duh, of course, I think in order to write.” Bernie explained that instead, one writes to think. The human mind can only think so much without seeing a written manifestation of its thinking. You need to write down your thinking, however primitive, in order to be able to look at it and say: “That is not quite right.” Then you will be able to figure out how to make it better. And then by looking at the resulting improvement, you will be capable of saying: “That is still not quite right.” And so on, until it is a much more sophisticated view of your thinking.

The lesson for me is that editing is a feature of the writing process, not a bug. Now, I don’t begrudge editing. I realize that it is just part of the process of helping me think. I love the process of editing! Nothing that anyone sees from me on Medium has been edited less than a dozen times. Each time, it is a slightly better expression of what is in my head.

Via: https://medium.com/creators-hub/the-management-strategist-wh...

- Blaise Pascal, et al

First wrote bad code that works, then fix what's wrong with it.

    1. Make it work.
    2. Make it work *right*.
    3. Make it work fast.
    (4. Make it work right again…)

Still haven't found a good way to convince them.

Same for me on all my comments. I listen to my comments on TTS, edit, repeat ... At times I've spent 30 minutes on a single reply. It's very enjoyable to hear the end result.

Some people do X best, others do Y.

The difference between propositional and syllogistic logic is important to keep in mind when making broad arguments like that about 'how stuff works'. Especially when 'stuff' refers to brains of people with individual differences.

> The written word—the persistent word—was a prerequisite for conscious thought as we understand it. It was the trigger for a wholesale, irreversible change in the human psyche—psyche being the word favored by Socrates/Plato as they struggled to understand.

> [...]

> Spoken words also transport information, but not with the self-consciousness that writing brings. Literate people take for granted their own awareness of words, along with the array of word-related machinery: classification, reference, definition. Before literacy, there is nothing obvious about such techniques. "Try to explain to me what a tree is," Luria says, and a peasant replies, "Why should I? Everyone knows what a tree is, they don't need me telling them."

I'd say there's still quite some room left here for authoring tools, but excalidraw + vim is the best I have atm.

And vim? Yeah. Wouldn't want to live without it, though I'm not going to argue it's better than any other capable editor. It's okay to like something just because, right?