jmarlena

Also, naming for clarity is just one way of naming

My epiphany this morning: It’s a lot easier to name something when you have the scope figured out, when you know what a thing truly is.

Code lines as liability lines

How to run LanguageTool on macOS | Ben Balter How to set up a free and open-source grammar, style, and spell checker that can be run locally on your machine without sending data to a third-party services like Grammarly, preserving the privacy of ...

My research also surfaced this how-to for setting up LanguageTool locally on a macOS:
ben.balter.com/2025/01/30/h...

Harper | Privacy-First Offline Grammar Checker Harper checks your writing instantly—fast, lightweight and utterly private—so you can polish every clause without surrendering a single keystroke.

My feed is abuzz with people asking about linters and alternatives to Grammarly. 🐝....

Here are some open source options:
- Harper: writewithharper.com
- LanguageTool: languagetool.org
- Vale: vale.sh

If you know of others, feel free to share!

Something internal for now 😁

GitHub - elastic/elastic-docs-skills: Instructions for code agents on how to author Elastic docs Instructions for code agents on how to author Elastic docs - elastic/elastic-docs-skills

The Elastic Docs Skills are open source now :) github.com/elastic/elas...

Oooo, I was just looking for a docs team owned set of skills yesterday to test something.

Anyone else dream of launching the next wordle and retiring early?

I wonder if new word games like this one get a lot of agent traffic. Excited to try it.

From an engineering community's Slack. That's an engineer wondering. I giggled.

“The IBM 704 could handle only about 4,000 ‘words’ of code in its memory. A good programmer was concise and elegant and never wasted a word. They were poets of bits.”

From “The Secret History of Women in Coding” by Clive Thompson

Curious about the last one. What do you mean by turning speed vs regular speed? Speed to pivot or change something major vs scale?

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Use your words.

I keep returning to this question: “How much time was actually saved if you factor in PR review?”

Also, I see a lot of generated PRs abandoned when scrutiny comes because it can be easier to rebuild to understand & test than to fix something.

I maintain that science writing is a form of technical writing.

And that story-driven science writing adapted for young people (and/or the visually inclined) can be a fun, creative form of explaining things.

I wonder if there’s a broader word for technical writing craft now.

This is human earned context in an academic setting. 😆

This is why I like Git version control & ‘git blame’ for understanding the writing/drafting process.

I responded on LinkedIn but sure wish more tech writers were on Bluesky.

Sample bias seems ancient. Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a woman?” comes to mind . . .

A cartoon reminder that tomorrow is World Book Day (In the UK anyway). Originally for the @theguardian.com

15 Famous Authors Who Self-Published Before Finding Traditional Success | Reading Curator - Expert Book Discovery Discover 15 famous authors who self-published their breakthrough books before achieving mainstream success. Learn how these writers took control of their careers.

What's to lose by self-publishing?

book-a-go-go.com/famous-autho...

This sums up the tech writing edict "Know thy audience"

I’m convinced now tech writers increasingly need more technical expertise so they can spot the plausible but very wrong assertions of LLMs/AI agents.

Reviewing PRs generated by AI can be the worst when no one can answer why certain assertions are made. It can take more expertise to debunk.

Dear article writers, bloggers, and thought leaders: before you ask a diffusion model to barf up a banner image, please just go on one of these archives and pick something nice.

Love this take on using AI strategically to support tasks and learning. 😍

Bibliotherapist

You might be continvoucing someone else, but not me.

#unmorged

Your ability to deeply understand a problem, explore new approaches & iterate all gets kneecapped when you outsource the first draft to AI. Even if you're reviewing/refining the AI output, it doesn't matter; you're not well-equipped to do so because you haven't spent time thinking about the problem.

Legit reason and helpful perspective that just might help me write more myself.

it’s important to keep caring about how things work and how they’re built