The Real Reason Silicon Valley Coders Write Bad Software (opens in new tab)

A quote from the article: "If all the programmers I've worked with in my career had had good writing instructions, they would have been forced at an early age to think clearly, to communicate complex thoughts, and to combine simple ideas into compound ideas. These ideas, later written as code, would have resulted in better products."

To expand a bit on what the author is saying, if programmers were taught how to communicate clearly in everyday language, they would instinctively take at least one review pass at what they've just written and edit it for clarity. And later, when they learned how to program, they would review their code in the same way -- with a desire to clarify code that might work but that's neither clear nor optimal. This is especially important when programmers work in teams.

I often correct people's writing here, a behavior that creates no small amount of annoyance. But when I correct people's code, for some reason the rules are different -- the second is accepted, but the first isn't.

I see code and natural language as the same, equally open to correction and improvement, but it seems most people look at poor writing skill as a sort of natural handicap, congenital, embarrassing and rude to bring up. That's too bad, because in many ways code and natural language work by the same rules, and both are open to improvement using the same methods.