Friction is an Anti-Feature

2026-07-07 · 1 min · #culture

Writing is hard. I want to express my thoughts in a way that is helpful for other people, but also makes me proud. I want to be correct. I want to be informed. I don't want my writing to contain blatant errors caused by poor editing.

This pressure adds inherent friction. So I reduce that friction. I write in Markdown, which is comfortable for me. I use a simple static site generator that gets out of my way. I push updates directly a repository which is built and published automatically. This is complicated for some people, but is comfortable for me.

I think others are in a similar place. While some people are comfortable throwing their words out there, others are concerned about their thoughts being perfect. More friction is the last thing we need.

For Philip, adding friction brings him to balance. For me, reducing it does.