Why should Software engineers develop the habit of writing?

Source: Internet
Author: User
Why should Software engineers develop the habit of writing?

In school, there is a distinction between "liberal arts students" and "science students". there are different learning contents and different ways of thinking. I am a science student. my major in college is computer science. after graduation, I work as a software engineer. In this process, I found that the gap between literature and science cannot be bridges. Many of the engineers I see are afraid of writing articles, and liberal arts students have a headache when they see code.

I think programmers should develop the habit of writing. Because writing articles will train many skills that are very useful for programming.

The core of writing and writing code is that they both need the ability to think clearly. Top software engineers are often excellent writers. their articles are as logic and elegant as the code.

There are many similarities between articles and Code: both of them start from a blank page, turning an idea into a complete product and pushing it to a specific audience; writing and writing code both requires you to encapsulate a series of logic statements into modules. These modules can be functions or paragraphs of the article. good code, like good articles, must be concise and concise, otherwise, CPU resources or human energy will be wasted.

When a product is about to be completed, software engineers are as anxious as writers who are about to publish their work. Like writing an article, when software is never completely completed, engineers need to spend more time optimizing code, developing new features, or redoing a part, because they are worried that published works do not show their best side.

Software engineers should write because development collaboration is becoming increasingly important. Open-source projects can be attended by people from all over the world. Developing and operating a product often requires a large number of engineers (Google Maps has 1100 full-time employees !). Both GitHub comments, code comments, and technical documents must be clear and accurate. Good writing skills facilitate communication between people and make projects run better.

You may think that some projects do not require communication and collaboration, but writing some software content usually promotes learning and further discussion. Now, we no longer need to learn from RFC documents or technical manuals, because there are tutorials written by other engineers online. In addition, we can learn a lot from Hacker News comments, tweets, and various blogs.

Let's talk about the blog. Good writing takes time. The text we wrote at the beginning may not be very good, so we need to spend some time modifying it several times to polish it. If you feel that you are too busy to write a blog, do not know what to write, or worry that your opinion will be publicly recorded for future use, you Should spend some time reading Steve Yegge's article "You Should Write Blogs. Even if the points in it cannot convince you, I believe you will gain some benefits after reading them.

Software engineers need to write because they may enjoy the writing process. Many software engineers expect their own software to "have an impact" and bring changes to people's lives. In fact, by writing articles, you can also "have an impact" on people. for example, blog posts about management can help others motivate their teams, teaching programming may interest a student in computer science. articles on career planning can help graduates find new career directions.

Even if no one reads your article, the writing process is also beneficial. It helps you clarify your ideas, clarify your views on a problem, and strengthen or weaken your opinions. It is of great value to combine messy ideas into concise words.

In short, writing is conducive to improving the level of software development and facilitating collaboration in the development process. even for a science student, it is also worth doing.

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