Programmers should develop the habit of writing

Absrtact: In the school, there is the distinction between liberal arts students and science students, the content of learning is different, and the way of thinking varies. I am a science student, university my major is computer science, after graduation my work is the software engineer. In the process, I found that the arts

In school, there are "liberal arts students" and "Science students," the distinction between learning content is different, the way of thinking there are differences. I am a science student, university my major is computer science, after graduation my work is the software engineer. In the process, I found that the gap between the arts and sciences has never been bridged. Many of the engineers I met were afraid to write articles, and the liberal arts students had a headache when they saw the code.

I think programmers should develop the habit of writing. Because writing an article will exercise a lot of skills that are very useful for programming.

The central thing about writing and writing code is that they all need to be able to think clearly. Top software engineers are often good writers, whose texts are as logical, fluent and elegant as their code.

There are many similarities between the article and the code: both are starting from a blank page, turning an idea into a complete product to a specific audience; writing articles and writing code require you to encapsulate a series of logical statements into modules that can be functions or paragraphs of articles Good code, like good writing, needs to be concise, or it will waste CPU or human energy.

When a product is nearing completion, the software engineer will be as anxious as the writer who is about to publish it. As with writing articles, the software will never be completely finished, and the engineers will need to spend more time optimizing the code, developing new features, or redo some parts, because they worry that the published works do not show their best side.

Software engineers should write because it is becoming more and more important to develop collaboration. 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 require clear and accurate text. Good writing ability facilitates communication between people and makes the project run better.

You may feel that some projects do not require communication and collaboration, but writing about software often contributes to 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 on the web. In addition, we can learn a lot from Hacker news reviews, Twitter and various blogs.

Mention the blog, and then say two. Good writing takes time. The text we started writing may not be very good, then we need to spend a little more time, modify it several times, polish it. If you think you're too busy to write a blog, don't know what to write or worry that your opinion is publicly recorded, you should spend some time reading Steve Yegge's "You Should write blog" (You Should write Blogs) article. Even if the argument doesn't convince you, I'm sure you'll get something after reading.

Software engineers need to write because they may enjoy the process of writing. Many software engineers expect their own software to "make a difference" and bring about a change in people's lives. In fact, by writing an article, you can also "influence" people, such as the management of the blog can help others motivate their own team, teaching programming content may arouse a student's interest in computer science, the article on career planning can help graduates find new career direction.

Even if no one reads your article, the process of writing is harmless. It helps you sort out your ideas, make clear what you think about a problem, and reinforce or weaken your point of view. It is valuable to assemble messy ideas into condensed text.

In short, writing is conducive to improving the level of software development, while more convenient collaboration in the development process, even for a science student, is a very worthwhile thing to do.