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Kat Nagel wrote
> And that is the point where your analogy begins
> to look a little wobbly.
All analogies are inexact, that's why they're analogies and not duplicates.
But it's useful and I still like it :-) Especially for illustrating how
domain knowledge is acquired by people who don't have it to start with.
> It took Caro at least 8 years to write each of
> those LBJ volumes:
Good thing nobody told him not to do it because he didn't have sufficient
knowledge of his subject.
Anyway, your time-comparison is a bit wobbly too. The scope of those bios is
much deeper than needed for tech docs. I'll bet he had the primary technical
facts of the bio worked out long before 8 years. In my docs, I don't need to
create imaginary dialogues between the founder and the architect on how they
discussed and rejected early models of the software, and thg architect's
feelings when he got fired. :-)
Maybe for tech writers, the timeline goes more like this: 8 years is to one
high-profile life, as 8 weeks is to one software application.
