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Subject:Re: Programming vs. Technical Writing From:"Porrello, Leonard" <leonard -dot- porrello -at- COMPAQ -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 13 Aug 1998 08:52:55 -0700
Lisa,
The interesting distinction you make also pertains to writing v.
techwriting. Some of the greatest prose and poetry in English are great
because they pack so much information into so few words. If I did this in my
techwriting, it would be suicide. You might say that the programmer's
writing is somewhat analogous to non-technical English. Ironic, no?
I would also draw a similar distinction between technical works for
native-English speakers v. those for non-native English speakers. In
internationalizing the documentation I am working on, I find a lot of stuff
that I need to make more explicit.
What frightens me about this profession is that through its practice, I'll
lose my ability to write densely packed, highly allusive prose.
Leonard Porrello
Compaq, Telecom Solutions Division
Pubs, Omaha
402.384.7390
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lisa Meng
> Sent: Thursday, August 13, 1998 10:28 AM
> To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
> Subject: Programming vs. Technical Writing
>
> The comments that J. Fraser made about programming attracted my
> attention, because I've found the same thing to be true when I program.
> I've been writing a series of short, web-based courses on JavaScript,
> which means I've had to learn some programming. I've noticed that the
> SME, (a "real" programmer), can write a program to accomplish a
> specific task in a few lines of code; when I write a program to
> accomplish the same task, my code is always longer.
>
> This makes me think that technical writing and programming approach
> information in entirely different ways. When I write, I tend to present
> information step by step; the last thing I want to do is to skip a step
> and
> lose my reader. When the programmer writes code, he seems to look for
> ways to skip steps, or integrate several steps into one. His main concern
> is making his code short. Has anyone else noticed the same thing? - LM
>
