This is an interesting read. The structured approach to writing (code or prose) with intent is surprisingly rare among developers of various skill levels in my

This is an interesting read. The structured approach to writing (code or prose) with intent is surprisingly rare among developers of various skill levels in my experience. One of the key pieces of advice I give to new recruits is "write a paragraph about your intent, what do you want this code to do?". This, it turns out, is non-intuitive for folks as it requires first understanding what is there (OP notes this well) before jumping into coding. I think the root of this is that you're paid to write code and you want to impress right from the start. Thus I found it very interesting when a few Q4's ago I was tasked with creating a new recruiting site for engineers ( https://engineering.twitch.tv https://engineering.twitch.tv ) to better understand our culture. The central focus of this site was to be a series of blog posts which highlighted core work that had recently taken place. My job quickly became editor in chief; working with engineers of various levels to understand what they've been doing, what was cool about it, and get them writing about it. Seven blog posts were identified and I made calendar events to check in seven days from then to read drafts... seven days later no drafts existed. As I dug into this it was apparent that they'd all assumed they could jump into the writing prose much like they do code, they all remarked that writing prose is actually really hard. I provided a template of my own pieces over the years and by the following quarter we had three pieces written! I credit TPW for giving me words to describe this to engineers ( http://tom.preston-werner.com/2010/08/23/readme-driven-development.html http://tom.preston-werner.com/2010/08/23/readme-driven-devel... ) and my high school English teachers for giving me the love of words!