This isn't about writing good code, or good music, or making good music. It's about making anything. The technique is the same regardless of whether you're making a lesson plan or a DIY desk.
I mean, it's not like I didn't know I was writing the word "shit". Usually I don't write any swears into my posts. This one, that one word was the point.
There is no generic word, offensive or not, worth repeating one hundred times in a short essay.
Example:
"That doesn’t mean the [stuff] you don’t get isn’t great, and it doesn’t make you less of a [stuff]maker not to get it. Just know that if you don’t get [stuff], you’ve still got something to learn, and that oftentimes it’s worth taking time to find somebody enthusiastic enough about [stuff] to explain what about it he’s into. (This is called teaching. As a kid you were taught that teaching had to do with seating assignments, but that was wrong. Teaching is knowing enough about [stuff] both to like it and to make other people like it.)"
If you use "is", "good", "stuff", or "things" more often than once per paragraph, you are not communicating clearly. That is true whether you use the word intentionally or not. Since you used it so often intentionally it means you forced the word into places where there are better words that could have been used, detracting even further.
Swearing doesn't instantly lead to good writing, it almost always leads to bad writing.
And to say that since you are making a general point you must use general words a fallacy. You can be quite specific in word choice while still making a general point.
Obviously we're going to disagree over whether it was overdone. That's subjective. I've seen a lot of positive response to this and surprisingly little negative. I'm fine with the response I'm getting overall.
As for offensive: It's the word "shit". I'm not using it in an offensive way. I didn't write "How to shit great". I used it as a generic placeholder. Is it offensive just because it's a swear word? Because here I thought we were more mature than to get prissy over naughty language, particularly when it's not attempting to evoke naughty imagery.