A friend of mine sent me a link to a blog post yesterday. The post was written by a software engineer who was discussing the use of AI in coding workflows. The substance of the blog post was actually fairly interesting and even taught me a few things. About three-quarters of the way through, though, I just gave up and skimmed to the end. I couldn’t get past one thing: the writing style. I don’t know if this is a software engineer thing or if those are just blogs I read a lot of, but I’ve seen so much of this trying-way-too-hard-to-be-edgy writing style, and it’s gotten to the point I need to get something off my chest. I get it. You want something punchy. Fuck convention. Who needs it? When I read a one-thousand word treatise that reads like the last few sentences, though, the “punchiness” becomes tiresome pretty quickly. Using the f-word in a rundown of your experience with AI agents is not only completely unnecessary, it isn’t groundbreaking either. The taboo around swear words and a great many other things has largely gone away thanks to the internet, which, to some extent, I’m all for. If you’re going to write in a way that might be considered less than professional, though, can you at least do it well? Throwing an f-bomb or other formal faux pas in only to seem edgy just feels so cheap. Now, I don’t want to completely dismiss all the elements of this writing style. I think there is a time and place for acerbic, attention-grabbing writing. An introductory paragraph with some punch to it can lock eyeballs, which we all know is all-too-important in the attention-deficit landscape of social media. If you’ve got me on the hook, though, and you have something interesting to say, can you please do me the favor of making the body of your essay digestible, especially since we’re dealing with a topic here that may have a lot of technical jargon thrown around? I’m already trying hard enough to rack my memory about what this or that is or trying to figure out what you’re talking about based on context. I don’t also need a challenging art piece to contend with. Sometimes unexpected pauses or abrupt changes in writing flow can be done to great effect. When done too often or inappropriately, however, it just feels like an older sibling telling you to get in the car and then hitting the gas every time you go for the door handle. I know this might seem kind of quaint or curmudgeonly, but I think there are generally good reasons for keeping a relatively professional tone in your writing, particularly as it pertains to technical matters. This is coming from someone, too, who also likes to indulge in taking creative liberties. Some dalliances with convention-breaking are a far cry from a piece of writing that comes off like something you’d premier at a poetry slam, though. At the end of the day, the only reason I’m reading your blog is to learn something about the subject matter. Artistic flair is great, but if it distracts from the reason I’m ultimately here and follows a formula I’ve seen countless times before, I question how artistic it really is.