Interest and Learning (was no subject) -Reply

[Bill Sullivan <bsullivan -at- SMTPLINK -dot- DELTECPOWER -dot- COM>]

Kent Newton opines:  If you took the time to learn all these new
areas, Win, when would you have time to write?  I see this as the
insidious effect of the mad race to know the latest technology: we're
so busy learning the technology that we have less time to research and
document the product or service we were hired to document.  Does
anyone else see this trend as time-consuming as I do, or am I just an
alarmist?

I say:  Time-consuming the new software (any new software) is.  That
goes for anything having to do with web pages, too.  Boring, even.
Congested.  In Word 6.0, they've got so many icons and other garbage
stuffed in there, there's hardly room for your text.  What's a
serious writer to do?  More and more, we tech writers are judged not
by our ability to write clearly or to say what needs to be said and
nothing more,  but by what we know about expensive tools.  And how
much do these tools actually help our work?  How much do they hinder
it?  Sometimes I wish I had the brain of a time-study expert so I
could figure that out.  Hell, sometimes I'd even settle for just a
brain.

Well, Kent, best I can offer you is:  Eye on the ball, kid.  Think
Tony Gwynn (one of my Padres).  And if you can't stand the heat, try
cold turkey.

Bill Sullivan
bsullivan -at- deltecpower -dot- com
San Diego, California