AI Weekly Malaysia

Simon Willison link-posts writing advice from Michael Lynch on anti-patterns in software blogging: meandering intros, misjudging what the reader already knows, assuming they read your earlier posts, excessive formality, and using links as a substitute for explaining terminology. Lynch's rule of thumb, clarified in a Lobste.rs comment, is that an article should still make sense to a reader who clicks none of the links. Willison adds that as more developers delegate writing to AI, software blogging is getting bland and homogenous, and readers want writing with personality.

Why: If you write READMEs, docs, release notes, or launch posts, the one actionable rule here is Lynch's: make the piece stand alone without any link clicks, since Willison says he suspects almost nobody clicks his links. That means inlining the definition of a term instead of linking out, and writing in your own voice rather than formal register. The AI angle is a decision point too: if your team's blog posts are AI-drafted, the differentiator readers are described as hungry for is personality, not polish.