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From the article: "developers are certainly better public communicators than lawyers are." Really? Paul Graham certainly is, but I'm willing to bet that the av
by edanm 16y ago
From the article: "developers are certainly better public communicators than lawyers are."
Really? Paul Graham certainly is, but I'm willing to bet that the average programmer is not as good a communicator as the average lawyer. At least not to "normal" (non techie) people.
By the way, this article brings up something I've been wondering for a while: who impacts the world more, technologists or politicians? At the edge cases, I think (but am not sure) that it's the technologists (Bill Gates has certainly had quite an impact, I'm guessing more than most Presidents, even). I'm wondering about the average cases of, say, successful entrepreneurs versus elected officials.
- cjoh 16y agoTry reading a piece of legislation vs a piece of technical documentation and see who the better communicator is.
- lionhearted 16y ago> Try reading a piece of legislation vs a piece of technical documentation and see who the better communicator is. The confusing, indecipherable, loophole-ridden mess is a feature, not a bug. That's the typical legislator's monetization strategy.
- edanm 16y agoYes, but consider that legislation is like a piece of code going into a legacy system that's been around for over 200 years, and is supposed to be as accurate as computer code in what it means. It is not an easy system.
- ultrasaurus 16y agoIt might be a faulty assumption to compare legislation to code written for maintainability (or "as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live") I tend to think of it as code written for job security: misnamed functions, buggy and non-existent commas. Testing by one or two WorksForMe-esque court cases.