Quote:
Originally Posted by murraypaul
Do address the original question from the other point of view, I think most good programmers would make very poor creative writers. They would present facts clearly in short declarative statements, there would be no art to their writing at all. Good code is clear and easy to understand. Good writing uses a huge variety of tricks and methods to give more than the just facts contained in a sentence, but also to add colour and depth, to create a particular feeling in the mind of the reader.
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I don't think the point was for programmers to have to be
creative writers specifically, but you might be wrong about the idea that laconic thought leads to bad prose.
I have an Australian programmer friend who's one of the pithiest writers and drinking companions I know, and it has everything to do with the way he codes and solves problems. All his best jokes involve pointing out some obvious fallacy in everyone else's thinking that leads to an irreverent paradox.
He's also extremely literate. I first knew him as a sound engineer and remember that he was the only person I knew with that job who used to lay books by Foucault, Virilio and Lyotard on the console. Virtually every other engineer I worked with back then read Tom Clancy or possibly Clive Barker.