Write Prose, not just Programs
Table of Contents
About me
- Puneeth Chaganti (@punchagan)
- Blog at punchagan.muse-amuse.in
- Running an informal "writing club" for 2 years
- Remotely working for 4+ years
Why write?
Clarify your thinking
Beginning to ask a question actually helps me debug my problem myself, especially while trying to formulate a coherent and detailed enough question body in order to get decent answers. Has this happened to anybody else before?
Writing improves thinking improves writing
Writing is thinking on paper – On Writing Well, William Zinsser
- Reduce mental load and free yourself up to make connections
- Slow yourself down, and consider thoughts fully
Better thinking & communication ⇨ better programmers
“Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” – Harold Abelson in SICP
Bedrock of remote work
… and we are all remote workers, right now!
- Writing helps those not in the "room"
- Asynchronous
- Searchable
Why blog?
Record of problems you solved
- One place to see a nice list of problems you've struggled with, and overcome
- You may encounter them again
- You won't remember all of them
A Body of Work
https://blog.codinghorror.com/assets/images/codinghorror-app-icon.png?v=3c9f28013a
Joy of helping people
@punchagan Excellent tutorial. I managed to fully secure my custom-domain web app on Heroku despite the use of free dynos. Thank you so much!
— Bob Olog (@BobOlog38) November 7, 2019
Learn by teaching
- Putting yourself out there pushes you to be meticulous
- To explain, you gotta understand
Learn from conversations
Have you looked at the new _build options: https://t.co/Nj8Uefis6Q. I haven't used them yet, but looks like they fit your use case.
— Kaushal (@kaushalmodi) May 30, 2020
Some tips to make it easier
Reduce friction to write
“Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard." – David McCullough.
Make sharing a part of the process
- You already write a lot
- Poor communication creates more work
You don't have to be an expert
- Write about what you are learning
- Write about what you don't know!
- Write to test your knowledge…
Set aside time to write
- I've written blog posts, I'd never come up with, otherwise.
- Slowing down helps you toy with some ideas, more carefully
Write for 1 person
Editing is where the magic happens
- First drafts are rarely good
- Rewrites and revisions bring in the clarity in thinking
- Get people to review your drafts
- 30% feedback vs 90% feedback
Read!
- Content to "respond" to
- Read not just for the content, but to learn to write
Couple of blogs I like
- jvns.ca
- danluu.com