Re: Looking for Advice...

[Yvonne DeGraw <yvonne -at- SILCOM -dot- COM>]

CHRIS AND JOE CUNDIFF <jcundiff -at- BELLSOUTH -dot- NET> wrote:
>Hi. I'm a technical communications major in Georgia. I am just beginning
>my "major " classes. I have to eventually take at least one programming
>language. I was interested on any thoughts to which would be the most
>advantageous to take for technical writing?

Programming languages come into and go out of style. But there are
underlying commonalities. The most valuable programming class I took was
"Data Structures". It happened to be taught in Pascal, which isn't used much
in the real world anymore.

As a technical writer, you probably aren't trying to become a programmer,
but want to be able to understand programs and discussions about programs.
The concepts a Data Structures class covers will transfer to any language
and help you communicate with programmers when they talk about the
organization of the program--not just the punctuation.

In addition to data structures--such as lists, stacks, and queues--you
should learn about object-oriented programming, which is used in many languages.
Yvonne DeGraw, Technical Services     o Technical Writing
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