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great point. i don't generally buy the argument that coding is drastically different from writing, insofar as it's laying out symbols in a way that can be under
by clairity 6y ago
great point. i don't generally buy the argument that coding is drastically different from writing, insofar as it's laying out symbols in a way that can be understood (and followed) by another actor. that's a technical skill that's fairly transferable between the two.
but it is drastically different in how it's interpreted by that other actor: computers are (designed to be) fairly rigid in interpretation (the frontier of that not being so is fascinating but in its infancy), so that there's little-to-no variance in the output. people are completely flexible in comparison. inputs can generate a wide range of outputs, and there's little control over that range within the writing itself. that seems to frustrate many coders.
even the purpose can vary. coding is generally imperative in nature: do what i tell you to do. writing is generally persuasive (here's what i think, why i think it, and why you should think it too), since it's hard to force the imperative.
writing is necessarily harder than coding, because the target has so much greater complexity.
- tra3 6y ago> i don't generally buy the argument that coding is drastically different from writing, insofar as it's laying out symbols in a way that can be understood (and followed) by another actor. that's a technical skill that's fairly transferable between the two That's a great observation. A bit of a tangent, but I enjoy writing code with a tight feedback loop. Either with a debugger, a set of unit tests. With writing, the feedback loop is not there. It's not clear whether the message achieves the desired effect. Framing writing this way, explains why it's such a challenging activity. At least in my mind.
- clairity 6y agoyes, another good point. you have to be your own feedback loop, simulating as many other minds in your head as you can, as @munificent laid out. it seems that proofreaders and editors came about to help in that regard.
- BurningFrog 6y agoIf you write code intending it to have good human readability - and you really should - you have the same problem writing code. I spend a lot of time rereading my code imagining I'm someone else who's never seen it before. Not sure everyone does.
- munificent 6y ago> but it is drastically different in how it's interpreted by that other actor: computers are (designed to be) fairly rigid in interpretation (the frontier of that not being so is fascinating but in its infancy), so that there's little-to-no variance in the output. Yes, I like to tell people that English is a programming language with no official spec and a billion partially incompatible compilers.