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Re: Remember secretaries? (was RE: Proof that content is more important than style)
Subject:Re: Remember secretaries? (was RE: Proof that content is more important than style) From:"Michael West" <mbwest -at- bigpond -dot- net -dot- au> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Sun, 1 Dec 2002 18:07:03 +1100
>
> I would expect most good programmers to also be good at writing. The
> cognitive skills are similar. Whether they choose to write text (as
> opposed to writing programs) is another question. It's understandable
> that they might prefer not to exercise the same set of "muscles" on two
> different tasks.
That is an interesting speculation. I'm not really sure at all
whether it holds true across the general population.
I have found that programmers and engineers are all over
the map in terms of their ability to express themselves clearly
in written English.
On the basis of my experience (no experimental evidence
offered -- just casual observation) I'd wager that verbal
skills and the symbolic language skills are not closely
corellated, statistically. When they ARE highly developed
in the same individual, then you have a "born" teacher
or "explainer" -- in its most exalted form, someone like
Sagan or Feynmann.
The rest of the time, you have the familiar scenario
of a technical expert who can make himself understood
by other technical experts, but not by anyone else.
Without them, we wouldn't be here.
--
Mike W
Melbourne, Australia
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