There's nothing wrong with writing long. My problem with Steve Yegge's blog is that it's absolutely not set up in a way to encourage long writing. Fluid width, to start, means that on a big screen I get little dangly lines of text, which makes reading his stuff seem like a pain. His stuff is written in a very generic gray Georgia; the style looks completely amateur. Compare his site to Paul Graham's, to pick the one source I'm sure everybody here has read. PG's site has thinner, stable margins, and it's written in a sans-serif font, which makes it easy to read his essays no matter the length.
And it is possible to use sans-serif well. Yegge just doesn't. And psychologically, that turns me off from his essays before I begin to read. I've got it in my mind that somebody with something to say will at least take the minimal time to ensure it looks good.
And it is possible to use sans-serif well. Yegge just doesn't. And psychologically, that turns me off from his essays before I begin to read. I've got it in my mind that somebody with something to say will at least take the minimal time to ensure it looks good.