There are two things every person has in common: knees. Your friends have knees. Your coworkers have knees. So does your Aunt Sally. And your Uncle Aloysius.
You. Me. Left knee. Right knee.
Yet, despite this common bond, people continue to argue, fight and hurt one another. There is conflict everywhere, both online and in the real world. But what if it were possible, after centuries of squabbling, to bring peace and harmony to all mankind through our shared identity. Well, that day has finally come.
Introducing Deez Knees, the first and only social network for sharing photos of knees — only knees. …
I had a problem. Before I tell you about this problem, be warned — you will get emotional if you keep reading. Your heart will break for me. There will be weeping, so much weeping. You will be tempted to start a GoFundMe page to help ease my burden.
OK, here it is. Ready? Grab a tissue.
I have so many sneakers that I can’t remember all the pairs I own. Tragic, but true. The Red Cross has already declared this an international emergency.
Alright, alright — this is not a real problem. Well, maybe it’s the first-worldliest of first-world problems. Anyway, I’m not here to justify my obsession with retro sneakers (nostalgia, basketball fanatic, extra-feet syndrome). I’m here to explain why I created a web application to address this hyper-specific, undoubtedly trivial, quasi-problem-like situation that affects nobody but me. …
Roger opened the Medium app on his phone and looked for something interesting to read. He scrolled past articles about how to be more creative. He scrolled past articles about how to be a mega-successful entrepreneur. He scrolled past articles about how to write way more gooder.
He was about to bounce over to Twitter when a headline caught his eye.
Forget Angular. Forget React. Introducing Tupress, the ultimate JavaScript framework.
Hmm, maybe it’s time to finally learn a framework, Roger thought. He had been dabbling in JavaScript for a few months. Why not see what all the framework fuss was about? …
It was far past midnight. My wife and kids had long gone to bed. But sleep was not an option for me. I had to figure it out. So I tweaked the code again, for the googolth time, and hit run.
Hmm, looks promising.
If I click here, the program should call the “compute next move” function. Yes. And if I click here, that function should call itself. Good. Now, if I click here, I should get…not that.
Argh.
More tweaks. More errors. More hours tick by.
Learning programming is hard, I thought. My next thought?
Yes, and that’s why I like it. …
I know sentences. In my decade as a print journalist, I’ve written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications. I’ve dished out more sentences than Judge Judy. But I didn’t study writing or journalism, at least not formally.
My degree is in electrical engineering. I learned to write by studying, and imitating, the sentences of professional writers. And writers are at their best, generally, in their first and last sentences.
“The most important sentence in any article is the first one.
You should give as much thought to choosing your last sentence as you did your first.”
— On Writing Well, William…
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