Re: Advice to English Majors

Subject: Re: Advice to English Majors
From: Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- AXIONET -dot- COM>
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 18:45:10 -0500

I wrote:

>>it's more useful to learn a number of programs than focus too >>much on a single one.

Then Barb Philbrick <caslonsvcs -at- IBM -dot- NET> wrote:

>I gave her exactly the opposite advice, but I think we're >after the same thing. I told her to learn one program well.

I didn't say anything about how well the original poster should learn
any program, but your standards seem reasonable. And, once you know what
one program can do, you have some idea of what to expect in other
programs.

At the same time, I don't think it's a good idea to be so focused on
learning one program that you can't adjust if you have to.

>It seems like learning several at the same time might be >confusing.

Agreed. Maybe a good combination of advice would be: learn one program
very well, then learn others as soon as you can.

Learning document processors is a bit like learning languages, I think:
the second one is hard, then the others come more easily.

--
Bruce Byfield (bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com)
Technical Writer
IBM WAVE Group
Burnaby, BC, Canada
h: (604) 421-7189 o: (604) 293-5781

"Doubtless a distrust of human reason is reasonable, but
few adventures are more honourable than an attempt to
live by it."
--Eric Gill, "An Essay on Typography"

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