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Thoroughly agreed. As a developer who spent a lot of time studying humanities, arts and other disciplines requiring constant writing for grant submissions, essa

Thoroughly agreed. As a developer who spent a lot of time studying humanities, arts and other disciplines requiring constant writing for grant submissions, essays, etc. a lot of skills required to be a good developer become invaluable for a dissertation and the other way around. > A core skill in both disciplines is an ability to think clearly. The best software engineers are great writers because their prose is as logical and elegant as their code. Personally, I found that combing through my text again and again and again to cut down on unnecessary words, combining similar ideas ideas and clarifying points made a huge difference, and was very much akin to optimizing software. It was generally something other students didn't really bother to do and their writing greatly suffered from it.

trentmb 12y ago
> combining similar ideas ideas I can't decide if that was deliberate or not.
FigBug 12y ago
I recently worked as an expert witness and had to write a report, I haven't written anything since University ~15 years ago. Writing a technically accurate report about source code for a non-technical audience was amazingly difficult. It was fun, but stressful. Each sentence has to be able to withstand a cross examination, sometimes it took hours to write a single sentence. I'd do it again, and I recommend anybody that gets the change to do it as well.
seanmcdirmid 12y ago
> Personally, I found that combing through my text again and again and again to cut down on unnecessary words, combining similar ideas ideas and clarifying points made a huge difference, and was very much akin to optimizing software. I learned these optimization techniques later in my grad school studies (a very critical adviser helped), never learning how to really write as a CS undergrad. Now I am the go-to guy for paper editing, and I find it frustrating that I can't seem to teach this to those I help write papers.

trentmb 12y ago

> combining similar ideas ideas I can't decide if that was deliberate or not.

FigBug 12y ago

I recently worked as an expert witness and had to write a report, I haven't written anything since University ~15 years ago. Writing a technically accurate report about source code for a non-technical audience was amazingly difficult. It was fun, but stressful. Each sentence has to be able to withstand a cross examination, sometimes it took hours to write a single sentence. I'd do it again, and I recommend anybody that gets the change to do it as well.

seanmcdirmid 12y ago

> Personally, I found that combing through my text again and again and again to cut down on unnecessary words, combining similar ideas ideas and clarifying points made a huge difference, and was very much akin to optimizing software. I learned these optimization techniques later in my grad school studies (a very critical adviser helped), never learning how to really write as a CS undergrad. Now I am the go-to guy for paper editing, and I find it frustrating that I can't seem to teach this to those I help write papers.