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What if the NYTimes had journalists that described the news in their specific prose or worse, poetically. Speak plainly, it’s the news, report it as plainly and accurately as possible.

Often many people like to attach mathematics and science to Software Engineering to signal elitism, but truthfully this profession is a lot closer to writing. Write clearly, first and foremost, and above all else.

$outsourced_bodyshop_ressource_0443434 needs to be able to read the news too.




I'm starting to notice a correlation between my prose and my code. Writing has not been my strength and I've quietly worked on it. Learning to organize my thoughts to best communicate with others has enabled me to organize my code for others to read. I've found this has improved the maintainability of my code. I wish I had put more effort into writing through out my schooling and early career.

I've noticed that the most successful business people I know are good at written communication. Much like programming often the better communicators write less to achieve more.


> What if the NYTimes had journalists that described the news in their specific prose or worse, poetically.

Eh, I think the news landscape would be improved if there was a news source providing it in poetic form. I wouldn't want everyone to do it that way.


Great comment. Thank you


"Let's not use inheritance, it's complicated and could confuse programmers. Better to just copy-paste code."

"Source control? I don't know, this git command line is a little bit too much. Let's just use zip files and email the source"


That is not what I am suggesting, but alas, you seemed to have proven my point. I did not write clearly enough, and behold the outcome. Now imagine if we all do this in a codebase.


Your writing was fine. HN is big enough that you can't take a single critical comment as strong evidence you were unclear. Maybe it's them, not you.


What were you suggesting?


I'm not sure if this comment was in jest or not but I've seen both of these things happen in real projects.


Inheritance is the worst method of code reuse ever invented. I virtually never use it, and whenever I do, I usually regret it later.




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