a programmer overheard in the hallway

Subject: a programmer overheard in the hallway
From: "Steve Schwarzman" <steve_schwarzman -at- hotmail -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 14:34:23 -0500


For your enjoyment, a snippet of programmer conversation I just overheard in the hallway: "I told [name] that I don't *read* documentation, so why should I *write* documentation?"

Hmmm. If you extrapolate that sentiment by many orders of magnitude to cover all programmers (obviously not a scientifically valid approach!), you might conclude that a) tech writers will always be needed since programmers can't/won't do the docs; and b) tech writers are not needed since nobody reads the docs.

Actually, the paradox is only apparent, not real. What the programmer was talking about was user documentation, not progammer docs. But it is fun to think about.





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