Although I agree that JS is being used incredibly irresponsibly, I also think this article is almost certainly AI-generated with minimal editing based on the way it reads, and I wish that wasn't the case because the topic deserves better than this.
[Edit: Although I recognise that em dashes are what a lot of people use to identify AI-generated text, that isn't what I was doing here. I hadn't even been considering them, to be perfectly honest.]
"At first I thought that this book was going to be like any other programming book; there's going to be some syntax a few examples a list of API's and so on, but as I read this book I realized it was like a Japanese game show - I was cast into this strange world that I didn't understand and I was forced to compete in these games of wit and strength that made no sense."
Holy s@#$! You're right. I didn't catch it at first, probably because it was on the HN frontpage. But yeah, the amount of em dashes (among other things) totally gives it away.
There were so many contradictions in the article, I was going to point them out. Don't see a point now.
As someone who makes a living by writing, this myth about em dashes is annoying. I have always used them. But now I have to avoid them so clients don't think my work is AI-generated.
I don't believe this article is largely AI-generated. It reads to me like the work of every marketer who has learned a list of "best practices" and sticks to them rigorously. It's probably also been edited so it aligns with Grammarly's or Hemingway's view of good writing.
Plus, some people seem to think that any polished, professional writing is LLM-ish because that's the style LLMs often imitate (badly).
You don't need to be an AI to use em-dashes. I actually use them quite a lot (even outside of Word) and AFAIK I am not an AI. I just care about text layout and proper use of characters. — is Alt-0151 on Windows (ok you need a keyboard with numeric pad).
Well, you may need to worry about them now. It's a well-known issue with the mainstream LLMs. Every few days, you see a new post on reddit from people asking how to get rid of em dashes from ChatGPT, etc.
Even when they are not a telltale-sign, folks are afraid of using them now because of AI. I'm not saying em dashes are bad. Our books are littered with them, and that's why LLMs spit them out consistently.
The funny thing is, I wasn't even thinking about the em dashes when I made the initial comment. I had been concentrating on the usage of English in general in the article, which to me is a far more obvious sign of AI generation than the usage of em dashes is.
[Edit: Although I recognise that em dashes are what a lot of people use to identify AI-generated text, that isn't what I was doing here. I hadn't even been considering them, to be perfectly honest.]