Re: Remember secretaries? (was RE: Proof that content is moreimportant than style)

Subject: Re: Remember secretaries? (was RE: Proof that content is moreimportant than style)
From: Paul DuBois <paul -at- kitebird -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 20:47:00 -0600


At 16:52 -0800 11/19/02, dmbrown -at- brown-inc -dot- com wrote:

>
...I'd agree with the generalization that
programmers can't write very well. It's not always true, but in
my experience, most programmers *don't* write that well, and in fact
don't *like* to write. Programmers prefer to program...

...and hairdressers prefer to dress hair, and shoe salesmen prefer to sell shoes, and ...

In any group, some are going to be able to write well, and some aren't.

That doesn't mean there's any relationship between one's "day job" and one's ability to write.

--David

I'm intrigued by this response. I can't decide if you're aghast that
anyone would actually engage in stereotyping, or if you just think that
programmers aren't, by and large, bad writers.

My apologies if you're offended by the broadness of my brush, but I'm
going to continue to paint with it: Programmers don't tend to produce
great documentation.

Sure, some will write well, and some won't. I think most don't. They
certainly don't generally write as well as tech writers. Some produce
excellent, excellent text, like Brian Kernighan, who is a joy to read.
Most produce stuff that isn't pleasant to read. It's easy to see why:
Writing is hard work. It's certainly no easier than programming. And
most programmers consider writing less interesting than programming.
So the writing gets put on the back burner, it doesn't get nearly the time
put into as is necessary to do an excellent job, and as a result it
suffers.

I read a *lot* of computer documentation written by programmers.
And because I tend to favor open source software, I read lots of
documentation that's written on a purely volunteer basis. Some of
it's excellent. Most isn't. As a rule, the programming's a lot
better than the documenting. I check out lots of new packages that
sound like they might be useful based on the announcement message,
but discard many of them after discovering that the documentation
isn't clear or is incomplete. I'm not going to spend hours trying
to decipher bad docs.

This is not to say that many of these programmers couldn't produce
better docs if they put in more time at it. I'm sure they could.
But that's beside the point. They don't put in the time, and therefore
in fact do not write well.

If that's stereotyping, so be it. But I'm a programmer, and I know
that we programmmers regularly joke among ourselves what poor writers
most of us are.

What hairdressers and shoe salesmen have to do with my original message,
I have no idea.


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References:
Re: Remember secretaries? (was RE: Proof that content is more important than style): From: Mike Stockman
Re: Remember secretaries? (was RE: Proof that content is more important than style): From: Paul DuBois
Re: Remember secretaries? (was RE: Proof that content is moreimportant than style): From: dmbrown

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