> A developer is a writer; one writes English and the other writes code, but they both write to a human audience (the only "code" a machine needs to see is 0s and 1s; programming languages are for humans).
I definitely agree with this! That's what I had been thinking the whole time while reading the articles and the comment threads. This is also my motto, here in the office.
It's too simple to say that there are differences between writers and programmers. I think "writer" should be treated as an umbrella term that encompasses braod ranges of skills. After all, a journalist, a poet, a technical writer and a translator aren't really doing the same thing, are they? I like to believe that the core subset of skills needed to be one of these is also needed (or at least highly valued) to be a good programmer.
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> A developer is a writer; one writes English and the other writes code, but they both write to a human audience (the only "code" a machine needs to see is 0s and 1s; programming languages are for humans).
I definitely agree with this! That's what I had been thinking the whole time while reading the articles and the comment threads. This is also my motto, here in the office.
It's too simple to say that there are differences between writers and programmers. I think "writer" should be treated as an umbrella term that encompasses braod ranges of skills. After all, a journalist, a poet, a technical writer and a translator aren't really doing the same thing, are they? I like to believe that the core subset of skills needed to be one of these is also needed (or at least highly valued) to be a good programmer.
Programming is writing. Absolutely.