4 ms·

English is great for technical writing.

beambot 2y ago
It probably helps that you have to be exceedingly thoughful about every keystroke & word less you need to completely retype the document or page!
- scoot 2y ago
  "lest" perhaps? At least you don't have to retype the whole sentence. ;)
- mhh__ 2y ago
  I'd have imagined you wrote a draft, corrected with the red pen, and then sent it off to (presumably) an army of women to do it properly.
adrianN 2y ago
I think English has too many ambiguities to be well suited for technical writing. There are efforts like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Technical_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Technical_English but they don't have a lot of adoption.
- trhway 2y ago
  In USSR/Russia we had a stand-up comedian (Zadornov) who in one of his jokes was explaining how the conciseness of the language is advantageous on the battlefiled. Recently I had to write in Russian (my native language) a tech doc of many pages. That is after 26 years of tech writing only in English (my 2nd language). That experience resulted in an epiphany for me on why Russia is so technically behind as I suddenly understood what Zadornov was talking about :) In comparison to English, Russian sucks, to say the least, as a technical language. All the things which make Russian great for literature and poetry make it terribly inefficient for tech writing, miles and miles behind English. If anything, I think English is the secret sauce of the success of the Western technical civilization. (For older Russian speakers - if you remember another Zadornov's "dolbani pljuhalkoj po kuvykalke, prikin'sja vetosh'ju i ne otsvechivaj" - now I think it really comes from the same weakness of Russian for technical communication)
  - z3phyr 2y ago
    Th soviet mechanical and rf engineering efforts were very well regarded during the early cold war period, and I would argue, much more sophisticated. Language did not stop the USSR. It was the economic policy like banning some disciplines based on ideological grounds like cybernetics etc. Check it out, the things for which a western scientist or engineer is given credit, were discovered/invented much earlier by soviet counterparts! What do you think about Kotelnikov?
    - myrmidon 2y ago
      I consider the view "many discoveries were made much earlier by soviet counterparts" to be mostly incorrect and heavily biased. But it is a common and easy trap for a lot of nationalities to fall into, because there are innumerable discoveries that happen before (and/or independent of) the canonical "inventor" (and you're automatically more likely to know the independent inventors if they come from your country!). Regarding Kotelnikov specifically: You could make the same argument (re: discovery of sampling theorem) for Whittaker, who published in 1915; ultimately, though, the whole debate is mostly pointless. I strongly believe that no single inventor so far was truly "significant", in that his nonexistence would have delayed science as a whole by more than a decade or two (consider Newton/Leibniz for calculus, Einstein/Poincaré/Hilbert for relativity, etc.). People should not focus so much on WHO discovered a particular fact, because the cold truth is that it's mostly a personality cult and that any single scientist that ever existed, no matter how brilliant, was still replaceable (from a "human progress" kind of view). Which does not stop me from being a Fermi-fanboy. But I completely agree with you that language did not really hinder USSR science.
      - randmeerkat 2y ago
        > the cold truth is that it's mostly a personality cult and that any single scientist that ever existed, no matter how brilliant, was still replaceable I found the MBA.
        myrmidon 2y ago

It probably helps that you have to be exceedingly thoughful about every keystroke & word less you need to completely retype the document or page!

scoot 2y ago
"lest" perhaps? At least you don't have to retype the whole sentence. ;)
mhh__ 2y ago
I'd have imagined you wrote a draft, corrected with the red pen, and then sent it off to (presumably) an army of women to do it properly.

adrianN 2y ago

I think English has too many ambiguities to be well suited for technical writing. There are efforts like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Technical_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Technical_English but they don't have a lot of adoption.

trhway 2y ago
In USSR/Russia we had a stand-up comedian (Zadornov) who in one of his jokes was explaining how the conciseness of the language is advantageous on the battlefiled. Recently I had to write in Russian (my native language) a tech doc of many pages. That is after 26 years of tech writing only in English (my 2nd language). That experience resulted in an epiphany for me on why Russia is so technically behind as I suddenly understood what Zadornov was talking about :) In comparison to English, Russian sucks, to say the least, as a technical language. All the things which make Russian great for literature and poetry make it terribly inefficient for tech writing, miles and miles behind English. If anything, I think English is the secret sauce of the success of the Western technical civilization. (For older Russian speakers - if you remember another Zadornov's "dolbani pljuhalkoj po kuvykalke, prikin'sja vetosh'ju i ne otsvechivaj" - now I think it really comes from the same weakness of Russian for technical communication)
- z3phyr 2y ago
  Th soviet mechanical and rf engineering efforts were very well regarded during the early cold war period, and I would argue, much more sophisticated. Language did not stop the USSR. It was the economic policy like banning some disciplines based on ideological grounds like cybernetics etc. Check it out, the things for which a western scientist or engineer is given credit, were discovered/invented much earlier by soviet counterparts! What do you think about Kotelnikov?
  - myrmidon 2y ago
    I consider the view "many discoveries were made much earlier by soviet counterparts" to be mostly incorrect and heavily biased. But it is a common and easy trap for a lot of nationalities to fall into, because there are innumerable discoveries that happen before (and/or independent of) the canonical "inventor" (and you're automatically more likely to know the independent inventors if they come from your country!). Regarding Kotelnikov specifically: You could make the same argument (re: discovery of sampling theorem) for Whittaker, who published in 1915; ultimately, though, the whole debate is mostly pointless. I strongly believe that no single inventor so far was truly "significant", in that his nonexistence would have delayed science as a whole by more than a decade or two (consider Newton/Leibniz for calculus, Einstein/Poincaré/Hilbert for relativity, etc.). People should not focus so much on WHO discovered a particular fact, because the cold truth is that it's mostly a personality cult and that any single scientist that ever existed, no matter how brilliant, was still replaceable (from a "human progress" kind of view). Which does not stop me from being a Fermi-fanboy. But I completely agree with you that language did not really hinder USSR science.
    - randmeerkat 2y ago
      > the cold truth is that it's mostly a personality cult and that any single scientist that ever existed, no matter how brilliant, was still replaceable I found the MBA.
      - myrmidon 2y ago