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- Dan Luu
Not many blogs make a more memorable first impression than Dan Luu’s. Visionally striking (or jarring) in its simplicity, it’s become a personal style inspiration :)
It’s clear from Luu’s writing that he’s a person interested in lots of things - and his blog is of the best out there to binge read.
BIO
Why Dan Luu?
An engineer with experience at Google, Microsoft and Twitter, Dan Luu is a legend in technical blogging. He’s been writing on his blog since 2013 where he (self-admittedly) writes frequently about ‘obscure stuff’.
His writing is generally directed at programmers but he covers everything from from niche technical writing to widely applicable thoughts on careers, writing and technology - so he’s worth checking out even if you’re not a programmer. (+ he links a ton of sources and cool supplemental information)
You can find Luu’s writing on his site (some of his articles are exclusive for Patreon subscribers). For more short form thoughts, he’s most active on Mastodon.
Topics: Programming, Technology, Big Tech, Careers
3 ESSAYS TO GET YOU STARTED
1 - Willingness to look stupid
Probably Dan Luu’s most famous and influential essay. It’s also a fascinating look into his thought process - see quote ⤵️ (+ HN thread for more conversation about the essay)
“But I think that being willing to say things that I know have a good chance of causing people to think I'm stupid is a deeply ingrained enough habit that it's not worth changing just for interviews and I can't think of another context where the cost is nearly as high as it is in interviews. In principle, I could probably change how I filter what I say only in interviews, but I think that would be a very large amount of work and not really worth the cost. An easier thing to do would be to change how I think so that I reflexively avoid thinking and saying "stupid" thoughts, which a lot of folks seem to do, but that seems even more costly.”
An analysis of technical blogs and a reflection on his own style and why he writes the way he does (and why you shouldn’t copy someone else). Includes several interesting appendixes & updates from his original post.
“I hired a professional editor whose writing I respect with the instruction "My writing is clunky and awkward and I'd like to fix it. I don't really care about spelling and grammar issues. Can you edit my writing with that in mind?"”
Luu calls this one of his most ‘ridiculable’ ideas. Contains quite an inspiring message about being ‘good’!
“In most real life activities, there's almost no one who puts in a level of delibrate practice equivalent to someone who goes down to their local table tennis club and practices two hours a week, let alone someone like a top pro, who might seriously train for four hours a day.”
BONUS
# Misidentifying Talent
The first Dan Luu essay I read - interesting connections between baseball scouting and big tech hiring.
WHAT IS WORTH CHECKING THIS WEEK?
Some of our favourite things we found on the internet this week:
From Dan Luu’s article Why it's impossible to agree on what's allowed - a thought provoking game about content moderation
Following the hype to DeepSeek or sticking with OpenAI? Ethan Mollick’s opinionated guide on which AI to use now
Tim Ferriss’ interview with Chris Sacca, one of the top investors ever
The Worst Page on the Internet - I love things like this! (+ interview with the creator, Neal Agarwal, in The Atlantic)
SUGGESTION BOX
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Enjoy Dan Luu’s writing & see you next week! 🙂