Top all-time · #13314
Alan Dix
Personal blog · alandix.com/blogdesignprogrammingscience
Alan Dix's personal blog at alandix.com covers design, programming and science. Since 2015, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 8 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-13, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Alan Dix's writing on the "third order" nature of writing, where the writer imagines the reader, and on writing to think. Also cited for an HCI paper on nondeterministic tests and a note on early BASIC array indexing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
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What Hacker News says?
Writing is a third order exercise. > But to tell you the story I have to imagine you reading these words, or more commonly almost imagine myself telling you these words. As I do the writing I imagine the telling, imagine you, recruit in that imagined picture of you all the same social understanding I need in face-to-face telling, but without you here to constantly remind me of who you are and what you know and care…
Comment linking /academic/papers/writing-third-order-2006/
on “Don’t think to write, write to think”Submitted Hands across the screen: why scrollbars are on the right and other stories as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWriting is difficult as it is a third order exercise, you are imagining the readers and then writing about them. https://alandix.com/academic/papers/writing-third-order-2006...
Comment linking /academic/papers/writing-third-order-2006/
on “To write a great essay, think and care deeply (2015)”Submitted Covid-19, the impact of university return as a story · 1 points
HN discussionNot sure if this paper helps answer your question: http://alandix.com/academic/papers/nond90/
Comment linking /academic/papers/nond90/
on “Where do our flaky tests come from?”Since BBC decided to talk about propaganda, I will call them out on their own coverage of civilian deaths from the war in Eastern Ukraine. When civilians were killed in Kiev controlled areas BBC described their deaths as result of rebel activity. When however civilians were killed in rebel controlled areas, they were described as having died from shelling without perpetrators being accused but the fact that it was a…
Comment linking /blog/2015/02/13/lies-damned-lies-and-the-bbc/
on “How TV propaganda is affecting Russian society”Guess I'm showing my age, but the first version of BASIC that I learned had the "gosub" command [1] for subroutine calls. N.B.: I'm using one-based indexing for my links here because that's apparently what early BASICs used [2] :) [1] https://picaxe.com/basic-commands/program-flow-control/gosub... [2] https://alandix.com/blog/2021/07/27/a-brief-history-of-array...
Comment linking /blog/2021/07/27/a-brief-history-of-array-indices-making-programs-that-fit-people/
on “Show HN: New visual language for teaching kids to code”> I can't tell you how many times an idea, that was crystal clear in my mind, fell apart the moment I started writing and I realize there were major contradictions I needed to resolve. perhaps because writing is a third order exercise. first order being in thinking in one's mind, one has to talk with oneself. second order is talking to someone else we are directing thoughts towards that person, but in writing we hav…
Comment linking /academic/papers/writing-third-order-2006/
on “Don't Let AI Write for You”