Software engineers should write
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Software engineers should write
1–10 of 166 posts
Re: Software engineers should write
#2Thoroughly agreed. As a developer who spent a lot of time studying humanities, arts and other disciplines requiring constant writing for grant submissions, essays, etc. a lot of skills required to be a good developer become invaluable for a dissertation and the other way around.
> A core skill in both disciplines is an ability to think clearly. The best software engineers are great writers because their prose is as logical and elegant as their code.
Re: Software engineers should write
#3I find myself uncertain about the thesis. Code that is clear and expressive to a human should not be assumed to also be efficient and optimal for a computer.
As writers say, know your audience.
Re: Software engineers should write
#4Thoroughly agreed. As a developer who spent a lot of time studying humanities, arts and other disciplines requiring constant writing for grant submissions, essays, etc. a lot of skills required to be a good developer become invaluable for a dissertation and the other way around. > A core skill in both disciplines is an ability to think clearly. The best software engineers are great writers because their prose is as l…
> combining similar ideas ideas
I can't decide if that was deliberate or not.
Re: Software engineers should write
#5I was always an "English kid", came close to failing my math subjects in middle school and finally in high school, I did fail Algebra I, and had to re-take it the next year. Meanwhile, I was in advanced programming courses and on my way to take an AP Computer Science course in the last semester of my sophomore year. Looking back, that experience taught me about how important modeling is to pedagogy. The fact is, my Algebra I teacher couldn't model the problem for me. He never explained anything, just expected us to memorize everything. We were never given real, tangible examples (contrived word problems don't count and never did!)...all we did was take stupid tests. My high school math experience was like a crash course in everything that's wrong with STEM education in America, and why we need to alter that if we're going to depend more on STEM in the real world.
In my opinion, programming has always been a form of writing. Just like songwriting is a form of writing. It's simply a different medium, and therefore you get a different result.
I might be looking at it from a different kind of lens though.
Re: Software engineers should write
#6I completely agree with this. I've started blogging for my work on some of the things that I'm actually writing code for.
I've actually found that it helps me think about more of the big picture stuff. In writing my first post about one of our APIs [1] I actually realized that there was a small omission in how we designed it.
[1] http://exosite.com/real-time-device-communication-part-1/
Re: Software engineers should write
#7There are times I wish I could go back to my younger self and explain exactly this. Unfortunately it took me almost a decade as a software engineer before I realized there was a career barrier without being able to communicate effectively when writing or presenting.
It's possible to stay as an average engineer for a long time, but if you want to try being an Architect, then at least 50% of your time is spent writing or public speaking. If you want to be an engineering manager, that's over 90%.
Fortunately a company I used to work for believed pretty strongly in cultivating these "soft skills", so they incentivized things like Tech Talks, and covered the cost of courses like Dale Carnegie.
Re: Software engineers should write
#8Highly agree with this - I am baffled why the humanities aren't taught this way in US high schools. Writing always seemed difficult to me then, but upon taking my first college class which had lots of essay writing, it dawned on me that making a persuasive argument was the most important part of an essay. This has much in common with the critical thinking touted in the hard sciences & mathematics. If English was taught this way in K-12 education, instead of enforcing arbitrary rules such as page length & word count, I would have done immensely better.
I got the important takeaway from that experience, but many people do not, and it is a shame.
Re: Software engineers should write
#9I find myself uncertain about the thesis. Code that is clear and expressive to a human should not be assumed to also be efficient and optimal for a computer. As writers say, know your audience.
> Code that is clear and expressive to a human should not be assumed to also be efficient and optimal for a computer.
Yes, but most of the time it's more important that a human can understand it easily than it is for it to be the most efficient code in the world.
Re: Software engineers should write
#10Why stop at essays or technical articles? As an engineer, I've always been fascinated by the structure and inner mechanics of stories - what makes them work.
As a hobby I've done a lot of reading around this; I've written three feature-length screenplays, and a novel you can find in Amazon[1], using very structure-centric approaches (as a result, my characters tend to be too flat).
Take a look at The Snowflake Method[2], unsurprisingly designed by a novelist who is also a theoretical physicist. Even with The Hero's Journey, there's a surprising amount of well-understood structure behind every story.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QPBYGFI [2] http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-met...