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John wrote:
"Andrea...having knowledge and skill of the subject means you won't HAVE to
defend a writing decision. I've never had to defend something I wrote. Why
should I? I don't make developers defend their code."
Hi John! I often have to defend my decisions to managers and other writers
and developers and anyone who has a stake in a project. No matter how much
technical skill or writing skill I have, I'm likely to write something that
someone on the project doesn't expect and wants me to explain. And when code
doesn't work (resulting in errors or usability problems), developers do have
to defend their decisions. I think challenging one another's decisions is
part of any collaborative effort.
Maybe "defend" is a poor word choice -- it suggests an adversarial process.
Maybe "discuss intelligently" is better?
