This blog post passed unit tests
23 comments
·March 9, 2025rednafi
GuB-42
How can the editing part be a bad thing? Published writers have editors who check their work before publishing. The result is a work that is more pleasant to read and with less chances of mistakes.
This is reproducing the process with a LLM, which is a great option when you are self-publishing and when hiring a professional editor is hardly justified, as it is typically the case for blogs. LLMs are very good when it comes to the technicalities of writing, which can make them great allies for writing better blog posts. Any kind of writing, really.
Another thing to consider is that the author of the blog post here is presumably not a native English speaker, judging by his use of Italian to make a point. Even proficient non-natives will sometimes use some odd phrasing that may be distracting, even to another non-native.
All this editing is additional work people may not want to do, and that's fine, but for those who do the work, I think the result can only be better.
rednafi
I never said editing is bad. In fact, writing is all about writing, reading, and editing.
English is the third language I learned, and editing is indeed one of the ways I improved my writing.
What I meant to say is that there’s too much focus on the process and not enough on the substance. Emphasizing the latter is more important but gets less attention on HN.
diggan
> would rather focus on the topic than the process itself. Too much focus on the process and a little too little on the subject.
Everyone seems to write for different reasons, for better or worse. Maybe for some people, getting to think long about the process itself, is the goal, then they're successful even if they never even publish a post.
With that said, I'm guessing most people start a blog because they want to say something, and then you're right, the only way to succeed is to put your fingers to the keyboard and finally publish something. But its worth keeping in mind that not everyone have the same goal.
gioazzi
> Meta blogs—aka blogs about blogging—are a common theme on the Hacker News front page. So are blogs about making blogs.
I see this as a signal. Many would like to write more, but they don't. I met quite a few developers at a conference last week, and did a rather statistically insignificant survey. I didn't get a single one to say they enjoyed writing. However, a good 80% said they would like to write more.
> the greatest trick behind blogging consistently is simply picking up the keyboard and starting to write
This reminded me of this post[1] from a few months ago. "Simply" doing something is usually not that simple, for whatever reason.
I think putting some structure to a process, defining a clear goal, is a good way to learn.
Finally, I really don't believe in the whole "writing for myself" thing, sorry. In fact, I used to think the same, until I realised it was (at least for me) sour grapes. Personally, when it truly is for myself, it stays in my Logseq journal.
I now "write for an audience". I try to imagine who I'm writing for, what they know, why they may be interested, and what I want to share with them. If I publish something, it is because I think somebody may care.
Then, I'm not really bothered if nobody reads what I write (or build). Meaning, I don't think I'm worthless or what I'm doing is useless when I get ignored. But I do consider it as some valuable feedback: if I broadcast something and get 0 replies, maybe I'm not building the right thing, or I am writing about something that nobody really cares about. Or I just presented it in a very poor way, and I can then figure out how to do better next time. Which is why I do think it's wise to spend some time reflecting and perfecting our craft but hey, whatever works for you!
Having said that, really happy for you that you manage to write so much, I wish I were able to be that productive!
[1]: Stop saying "just" (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42038139
rcarmo
I've been doing something similar with my drafts (https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2025/01/12/1730) but have found that if I follow the LLM's recommendations all the time my writing becomes bland and formulaic.
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JeromeLon
This email passed unit tests.
I would love gmail (or any mail composing tool) to trigger my defined list of unit tests whenever I click on "send". Something similar to OP. For me it would probably be:
- the email must be direct and concise
- the email must be respectful of the recipient and of anyone else would could read
- the email must use proper English
And the AI would give suggestions to reach the goals if some of them failed.
gioazzi
I'd love to have this, too!
There are a couple of things I'd like to do next:
- make it into a public API - so that it's easier to create plugins; - provide multiple "blueprints" for different types of text (in this case, for emails).
I think with these 2 features it should then be trivial to make it available in email clients, or as a browser extension.
diggan
> - the email must be respectful of the recipient and of anyone else would could read
Is this something you commonly struggle with? Sounds like something that could be a deeper issue than just "writing emails in a weird way", as you'd hit that issue using your natural voice, which you can kind of hack away in emails with LLMs, but what about communication outside the computer?
JeromeLon
I am not struggling with it in the sense that I need help on how to write in a better way.
It's just that I don't always ask myself whether the email I am about to send may contain unnecessary anger and would deserve an extra 5 minutes of cool down.
kuboble
As a person who frequently offends people unintentionally I think any feedback for any communication form is a good learning material.
dleeftink
Human in the loop, I like it. Next step: real-time unit-texts!
gioazzi
Watch mode is definitely coming! Right now I was just testing locally and the performance of the model is just not there to get feedback that fast, but the idea of automated tests is of course that they should be as fast as possible.
timeon
Am I the only one who sees only the title on that page?
gioazzi
Damn... I think you're being hit by some bug in the fancy fade-in animation. It's supposed to trigger on scroll.
I don't really like it, but apparently it's what cool kids do these days ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and it came with the template. But if it randomly breaks, too, off it goes!
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[flagged]
Meta blogs—aka blogs about blogging—are a common theme on the Hacker News front page. So are blogs about making blogs.
I’m not denigrating anyone’s effort here, but the greatest trick behind blogging consistently is simply picking up the keyboard and starting to write. There’s no other secret sauce.
As you write more, you’ll find your own style and the set of methods that work for you. This is one thing I’ve learned from continuously putting out stuff[1] for the last six years.
LLMs can be helpful, but they aren’t a replacement for thought. Pretty, JS-infested sites are mostly a big time waster unless you’re writing about something interesting. The same goes for scripted processes. You write, read, edit, and hit publish. How many eyeballs your blog gets has little to do with how perfectly you nail your theme. More often than not, it’s a bit of luck and being authentic.
It took four years before my write-ups started hitting the front page here. That was never my intention. I wrote for myself, and some people eventually found it useful. I don’t follow any of these scripted processes and would rather focus on the topic than the process itself. Too much focus on the process and a little too little on the subject.
[1]: https://rednafi.com/