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Re: "Surviving the Dying Career of Technical Writing"
Subject:Re: "Surviving the Dying Career of Technical Writing" From:Rick Lippincott <rjl6955 -at- gmail -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Tue, 22 Mar 2016 19:28:53 -0400
It's obvious from the first paragraph that the author of the article
believes that "software technical writing = technical writing." Well,
for anyone in that mindset, yeah the profession may be dying. At the
very least, it's getting to be a lot smaller.
But, tech writing has been around since long before software was
invented, and it isn't going away. People are continuing to invent new
things and build new things. Not too far from where I am, flying cars
and walking robots are becoming a reality. New things, new systems,
people need to understand how they function, and we explain things.
150 years ago, technical writers probably were documenting steam
engines, and they probably went into a panic when the simpler and
easier-to-maintain internal combustion engine came along. The field
didn't die then, it's not going to die now.
So. Not dying, just changing. But then, we've always changed, we
-have- to change, because, as noted above, we explain things...but
once a thing becomes ubiquitous, it doesn't need an explanation any
longer.
Lucky for us, human creativity will always result in new systems and
innovation, and that's where we come in.
Where we will -always- come in.
--Rick Lippincott
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