Why aren't there writing workshops for programming?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1503894

by elzr • 16 years ago

2 4 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

A workshop where programmers (not startups!) would gather and READ to each other the UI or the code of their own apps (not applications!), with an emphasis in WRITING, not in funding or hiring or virality, but in hacking stuff out, in polishing, in sharing techniques.

Most programming meetups I've been to are not like this, they don't have at all the ethos of a writing workshop. Thoughts?

hga2• 16 years ago

You might want to check out programmer and writer Richard Gabriel's web site http://www.dreamsongs.com/; I can't recall if he's written on this, but he has done the writer's workshop thing.

elzr• 16 years ago

I'm perusing his essays and he looks like one heck of an interesting writer. Thanks for the pointer hga.

hga2• 16 years ago

You're welcome and he certainly is. His "Worse Is Better" thesis (which he's not at all sure about, note that he goes back and forth on it) has got to be one of the most important ones developed in this early age of computer and software development.

BTW, note that Java is a The Right Thing language....

mechanical_fish• 16 years ago

Programming meetups don't look like writing workshops because software is different from prose.

One big difference is the goal. The goal of a writing workshop is to make more readable stories. Readability is the metric, the only one that matters. When someone reads your story, they are performing a usability test. And when they tell you how to make the story more entertaining from the perspective of a writing-workshop writer, they are -- to first order -- also telling you how to make the story work better for the average reader, and how to make it sell better, and how to write a story that will attract publishers and agents to your work.

(Of course, to second order, workshoppers tend to produce the kind of writing that fellow workshoppers like. This can be a problem. There are people who are known as "writers' writers" -- those whose work is beloved by their fellow writers but which fails to catch on as strongly with the general public.)

A related difference is that story-writing is a smaller and better-defined problem than programming. There is one set of tools: The English language. There is one audience: Literate readers of English. There is a long tradition. There are well-established tropes. The marketplace is pretty well understood. (And the writers who aren't aiming to sell into traditional writing markets -- like, say, prolific bloggers -- don't tend to hold traditional writing workshops either. I've never heard of a blogging workshop. What sense would that make? Blogging is a giant global workshop.)

Finally, writers -- even fairly talented ones -- are a dime a dozen. The supply of people who want to write, and attend workshops, is vastly larger than the demand for written stuff.

Software is different. For one thing, it is far more diverse. A workshop in which Lisp programmers read strangers' corporate Java code, or expert Javascript programmers critiqued Linux disk drivers, would be kind of awkward -- fun and enlightening, perhaps; an entertaining circus of flamage, quite likely; but probably a bit superficial. To get a writing-workshop experience in software, you need to get everyone working on the same codebase. Open source is key here. Go to a Drupal code sprint, or a Rails hackathon.

Also: Software isn't designed to be read. Even those of us who would like to believe that software is designed to be read... don't design software to be read. Not primarily. The primary goal is that the stuff works, and/or that people buy it or use it. And the net result is that meetups tend to focus on "virality". Is the software nifty? Does it solve a problem? Is it usable? What's its cost/benefit ratio? Sad but true: These things are the metrics. They are, to first order, more important than the quality of the source code. [1] That's why programmer meetings gravitate towards these fundamental topics.

Finally, good programmers are hard to find, so it's hard to get three of them together in a room without someone trying to post a job ad on the wall. Writers wish they had this problem. If the writing-workshop folks heard you complaining that, gosh, you just can't hold a programmers' gathering without people trying to hire everyone in the room, they would burn you in effigy.

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SUMMARY: "To get a writing-workshop experience in software, you need to get everyone working on the same codebase. Open source is key here. Go to a Drupal code sprint, or a Rails hackathon."

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[1] Of course, code quality does matter. But usually because it contributes to the other goals, not as a goal in itself. So criticism of software often focuses on the primary goals: Does it work? Does anyone care?

Why aren't there writing workshops for programming?

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