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Subject:RE: They Write the Right Stuff From:Emru Townsend <etownsen -at- Softimage -dot- com> To:"'techwrl'" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 27 Apr 2000 16:17:00 -0400
This quote is key:
"Bill Pate, who's worked on the space flight software over the last 22
years, says the group understands the stakes: 'If the software isn't
perfect, some of the people we go to meetings with might die.'"
When I started working at Positron, working on documentation for 911
call-response software, that was one of the first thoughts to enter my mind:
the documentation had to be accurate and understandable, because people's
lives depended on it. Nothing makes your prose clearer than that kind of
motivation.
(As it happens, about three months after I started, I had occasion test our
software by calling 911 twice in the space of a week; once, when I
collapsed, and again when a co-worker did the same. Yeah, I'm glad our
products worked.)
