Re: Have to know Programming to be able to write about it? -- NO

[Beth Agnew <Beth -dot- Agnew -at- senecac -dot- on -dot- ca>]

I don't do tricks, but you can see a snippet from a much larger work at 
http://www.agnewcom.com/portfolio.html. Use the live link halfway down 
the page. I spent about 2 weeks with some SMEs, and have had no 
geological training. This content was good enough to be credible with 
visiting PhDs in geoscience.

I must say I'm astonished that this seems to be such a foreign notion to 
so many people on the list. I suppose if you are truly not convinced 
that it is possible to write competently about a subject without being 
an expert in it, then you will dismiss any such writing as inferior. 
Doing so, you invalidate the many excellent technical communicators who 
achieve this very thing day in and day out.

The expert is often the worst person to write about their subject, 
because they no longer see it with the naivete of the new user.
Hence the manuals that leave out crucial steps because "tsk, everyone 
_knows_ you're supposed to do X before Y". Remember all those unusable 
manuals in the early days of computers? Written by computer experts, not 
communication experts.

The best thing about this profession is the broad range of practitioner 
it embraces. It is inclusive rather than exclusive; no matter where you 
are on the continuum from writer to technician, you can find a place as 
a technical communicator. Obviously, some jobs will require a greater 
degree of subject matter knowledge than others. But to say you must 
adhere to a narrow and one-sided definition of professional preparation 
lest you be branded incompetent denigrates our peers and diminishes us all.

Many of use have worked tirelessly to educate employers to this very 
fact: you do not need to be an expert in the subject matter to be able 
to write intelligently about it.
--Beth

Matthew Horn wrote: