RE: What does it mean to be technical?

["Giordano, Connie" <Connie -dot- Giordano -at- FMR -dot- COM>]

OK everybody who's a hardware, manufacturing, or policies & procedures
technical writer... Get off the list.  You're not really technical.  And
that goes for all of you who never took philosophy, can't read code yet,
have vertical industry expertise, extensive background in learning theory,
journalism or marcomm!

Connie P. Giordano
Senior Technical Writer
Advisor Technology Services
A Fidelity Investments Company
704-330-2069 (w)
704-330-2350 (f)
704-957-8450 (c)
 
Who apparently isn't a technical writer.... Who knew?
 



-----Original Message-----
From: Victoria Nuttle [mailto:vnuttle -at- cauto -dot- com] 
Sent: Friday, May 23, 2003 11:14 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: RE: What does it mean to be technical?




>I don't need to know how to write in C# or even read C# in order to be
able to understand what the application is intended to do. I mean, what is
code, really? Is it some cryptic form of expression that takes strong
intellect to comprehend?
>No.
>It's a set of instructions designed to tell a set of circuits to do
something. That's it. Nothing more.

No.  I mean yes.  I mean...

Understanding code, and being "technical", is a logic thing.  If you pay
attention in philosophy class and really understand how logic works, you can
look at most code and figure out how it is structured and what it does.
Every good technical writer I've known could look at any code and at the
least figure out what is happening in it. 

While a good "technical" person may not be able to program in code, they
should always be able to look at all the parts and figure out how they work
together.  A techie of any sort should love being able to get their hands
into the nitty gritty and figure out not just how it works, but why it
works.

--------------------------------------------
Victoria J. Nuttle
Technical Writer, Creative Automation
vnuttle -at- cauto -dot- com



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