For my using OP in my post,
well, here on Hacker News (HN),
that is a standard abbreviation.
But, yes, good technical writing
would not do that without, say,
original post (OP) or some such.

> There was a hyperlink

Sorry, clearly that's just not
good enough since the first use
of the acronym did not have the link.
The standard in technical writing
is to take some steps to be
adequately clear on terminology
at or before the first, say, significant
or material, use of that technology
in the piece of writing.

> Google is a great source for finding things you don't know. The alternatives - explaining in every single blog post the complete set of terms that you need to understand to read it - would make for massive, unreadable posts and would be 90% useless for most of the audience it is aimed at.

Of course it would, but I've
suggested no such thing.
Instead, I was clear:

"With good technical writing, nearly anything in practical computing can be explained plenty well enough to nearly any of us."

Did I mention, my concern is
good technical writing?
I thought that somewhere in my
posts here I mentioned that
my concern was good technical
writing. To be more clear,
let me say, my concern is
good technical writing.
I want to be fully sure:
Did I say that my concern was
good technical writing?

For just what constitutes good
technical writing, I won't try
to give a course here and
will leave that
to other sources.

But, the good work in the
fields of science, technology,
engineering, and math (commonly
called the STEM fields)
has some really good examples
of good technical writing.
E.g., for science, see the
freshman physics texts by
Sears, etc. For technology,
see D. Knuth, if only his
The TeXBook. For engineering,
see, say, D. Luenberger, Optimization
by Vector Space Methods.
For math, see, say,
any of the more respected
texts for freshman calculus
going back at least 50 years.
Also see the texts of W. Rudin.

The core
problem I am addressing here
is that the technical
writing in practical computing
is way too often really badly
done with high costs for
nearly everyone involved,
really high costs.

Some of the comments here
defending the original post
are straining to defend
the bad technical writing,
making excuses for no good reason.

Let me say, likely the first
good rule in good technical writing
is to strain never but never
have undefined terms, acronyms,
and jargon; instead, on or before
the first use of any such,
have, for definitions, motivations,
discussions, examples, explanations
or at least links. E.g.,
write "Amazon Web Services (AWS)".
Just do that -- always for
the first use of the acronym AWS in
anything at all about AWS.
Just do it, always. Spend the extra
three words. Be clear. Remove
all doubt. Reassure the reader that
in the piece of writing they
just will not face undefined
gibberish. Assure the reader
that they don't need Google
searches to get prerequisites
for the piece.
Be easier to read.

For acronyms, the example
of API abbreviates both
application programming
interface and American
Petroleum Institute is
right on target -- for nearly
any three letters, there
are from several to many
three words they could abbreviate.

And, if there is no reasonable
way for the piece of writing
to be for a broad audience,
then up front say what the
intended audience and prerequisites
are.

This is dirt simple stuff. To
accept these lessons it should
be sufficient just to want
to communicate instead of intimidate.

Are we communicating now?