I see both as incantations that are run in wildly different execution environments, and thus there should be lots of overlap during the creation process. Code is a magic spell that executes in a mostly deterministic digital system. While writing is a magic spell that executes in a very non deterministic biological system.
Programming and Writing
81–87 of 87 posts
Re: Programming and Writing
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Stephen King had this to say on the art of writing in his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft: “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings." https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-does-it-mean-to-ki...
> “Don’t get discouraged because there’s a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times. You’ve got to work it over. The first draft of anything is shit. When you first start to write you get all the kick and the reader gets none, but after you learn to work it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as…
> leave something you know unfinished that you can start in the morning
Agreed. A good stopping place is the worst place to stop!
Re: Programming and Writing
#83The similarity between the two probably helps explain the plethora of programming blogs versus the absolute desert that is the hardware/circuit based blogosphere....
Re: Programming and Writing
#84Summary of the blog post:
- Programming and writing are similar
- In writing you have rules (natural language grammar), in coding you also have rules (formal language grammar)
- In writing you build big things from small things. Small things must be nice. Big things must also be nice. Small things must align with big things. Like coding.
- If you don't write you're lazy. If you don't code you're lazy. Very similar.
- BUT actually writing and programming are completely different because in one you work for years on a single piece which cannot be changed after it's released, so you torture yourself to make sure it's as perfect as it can be without going insane -- and if you give up at any point along the journey then all of your efforts are basically wasted, WHILE in programming you have objective criteria by which you can judge if something is good enough, release working but imperfect parts of the final product along the way, modify things as you see fit at any point, and even if you decide to stop along the way -- it's fine because your progress is incremental
Re: Programming and Writing
#85Summary of the blog post: - Programming and writing are similar - In writing you have rules (natural language grammar), in coding you also have rules (formal language grammar) - In writing you build big things from small things. Small things must be nice. Big things must also be nice. Small things must align with big things. Like coding. - If you don't write you're lazy. If you don't code you're lazy. Very similar. -…
I consider this sort of polemic, reductive summary utterly impolite. You left out the really important point: the suggestion that writing code could benefit from approaching it like one had only one shot at it, instead of patching smth. together that might or might not be improved upon incrememtally later on.
This sort of summary you did there is not in good faith.
Re: Programming and Writing
#86Cool! Some of my favorite sci-fi writers are programmers or former programmers — Andy Weir, Charlie Stross, Dennis Taylor. Although that may have more to do with me (as a programmer) than with any relationship between fiction and software.
Have you read Weir's Project Hail Mary yet? If so, did you like it as much as The Martian ?
I liked Project Hail Mary more than The Martian, possibly because it's quite a bit more imaginative, and because the main character isn't a perfect person, so it's easier to relate.
Re: Programming and Writing
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet, we say that “programs are written for people to read.” Writing for people to read is not “very logical and very precise.” It’s “very expressive,” and sometimes, although the part the compiler reads is correct, the thing the human infers from the program is imprecise and expressive. Working with code teaches that code is experienced, too. We read a thing, go hunting for its downstream dependencies, learn othe…
> Writing for people to read is not “very logical and very precise.” It’s “very expressive,” There’s a continuum between writing technical manuals and ‘Ulysses’, with airport-bookstand thrillers somewhere in between.
Hey, late reply. I agree with your general point, and would add that the highest logical/precise human-readable text is more likely to be specs, e.g. RFCs, ISOs.
A Technical Manual would need more attention to the human experience than a spec, IMO.