> My advice is to practice your writing skills after you get a job, not before. I so completely disagree. The same can be, and often is, said of actual program

> My advice is to practice your writing skills after you get a job, not before. I so completely disagree. The same can be, and often is, said of actual programming skills. The result is a collection of people with insufficient skills and poor communications. Writing influences your ability to organize thoughts into a cohesive flow which influences programming skills. It is really frustrating to work with developers who can’t do their job without some magic tool to do the job for them. These are people scared to death to write any original code or make any technical decision. It is so frustrating that the next time I go through hiring I am so tempted to use an essay requirement as a filter.