4 ms·
I JUST wrote a draft of an essay that says essentially what this says: Writing is necessary to thinking, and reading doesn't cut it.
by pmichaud 17y ago
I JUST wrote a draft of an essay that says essentially what this says: Writing is necessary to thinking, and reading doesn't cut it.
- mark_l_watson 17y agoYou are right about writing: it shows you what you don't yet thoroughly understand and need to think about some more.
- jacquesm 17y agoWriting changes the writer more than reading changes the reader.
- erikb85 17y agoIs writing and thinking identical to U?
- mbrubeck 17y agoLucky for you that you read Schopenhauer's version. Now you won't need to finish writing your own. :)
- araneae 17y agoSo... you've never composed an essay in your head without writing it down? Writing may help you organize your thoughts, but it's not necessary.
- ugh 17y agoJust composing in the head is a nice first step, but merely thinking about something makes it easy to gloss over flaws in your thinking that you have to face when wrting something down (if you do non-stream-of-consciousness writing). On the other hand you have to think about things only tangentially related to the actual problem you are writing about like style, grammer and finding the right words. So there are advantages and disadvantages to actually writing stuff down.
- mbrubeck 17y agoHow many bugs do you find before writing the code, compared to the number you find after?
- araneae 17y agoAre you saying you don't learn anything from thinking through how to write a big piece of code before you write it? The vast majority of bugs I find after writing the code are trivial. Certainly, I learn something from writing it, but I find that if I just start writing without thinking about it first, especially for larger projects, I don't end up where I want to and have to scrap large pieces of it. Writing helps you get the details straight, but thinking is essential for designing the big picture.
- pmichaud 17y agoI just posted the essay: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=993253 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=993253