RE: arrogance

Subject: RE: arrogance
From: Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 09:03:55 -0700


Quoting Daniel_Hall -at- trendmicro -dot- com:

> Having a developer suggest _wording_ changes (again, not for correctness)
> makes no sense. Especially when the developer is a poor writer.

If non-writers make the mistake of thinking that anyone can do it, writers
often make the mistake of thinking that nobody else can do it. Both these ideas
are half-truths, so far as I can see. On the one hand, technical writing does
require certain skills. However, on the other hand, these skills are not
especially rare, and a reasonable number of people have some of them.

Even a poor writer can give useful feedback, especially if you give him or her
some guidelines. Sometimes, getting any sort of feedback is useful, simply
because it gives you another perspective.

> While they don't mind
> interacting with others on the team to share the information they have, they
> don't like these other team members telling them how to write code. No?

A good team of programmers often discuss the best way to write code.

I suspect some of the problem with technical writers is that often they work
alone, either because the company doesn't have another writer, or because they
have well-defined responsibilites. Programmers, I think, are more used to the
idea that their source code will be modified by someone else.

--
Bruce Byfield bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com 604-421.7177

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References:
RE: arrogance: From: Daniel_Hall

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