I hated writing in high school. It wasn’t objective like my favorite subjects, math and science. It also didn’t help that we had to write about old, hard-to-understand literature like Shakespeare. But my perspective on writing changed once I started working full-time as a software engineer.
Writing will forever be important, I write and then ask ChatGPT to make it shorter, more readable or in list form. Either way, it is an exercise in gaining clarity.
I love the collaboration and benefits of tools like Miro and Lucid. But, when it comes time to capture, writing a document seems to work best to finalize a concept. Why? Well, for me it helps identify hidden logic that may be missing from a conversation. It helps the information travel beyond the participants in the meeting, and it captures intent, debate, for others who may come into the project later who need to be brought up to speed. Writing is essential and high performance teams do this in my experience.
Totally agree. When trying to break down complex ideas into logical structure you also detach yourself from your "box" and your perspective and this can bring you new valuable insights. And often does when I do it.
Crafting public documents is also a high leverage activity and can bring you a lot of recognition in the organisation if you do it well.
I started writing on substack too, with one of the goals to improve as a writer, but also that's a different type of writing than I do at my engineering job and I think I'm enjoying it so far
I believe that writing would make software engineers better communicators. It would help us communicate our ideas clearly to stakeholders and our team mates effectively, in a space where technical documentation is so important on projects, I know this is an important skill that engineers need to get better at.
I think the people who can code well and write good technical documentation are going to transition well into the fully AI-assisted world. So much of what I'm seeing involves not so much the ability to code well, but the ability to write clearly about what you want your code to do. I think the people who can write decent code but struggle to write good documentation (comments and formal docs) are going to struggle to make the transition.
The tools are going to write more and more of the code for us. We're going to be spending more time writing about the code and less time writing code.
Recommend having a pocket journal, so you can dot down ideas and bring it when you go somewhere.
You can use your phone to type down your ideas, but for me, it's more fun and helpful to write them down in a journal. It comes down to personal preference, but there have been studies that show handwriting is more effective for learning and will lead to better understanding than typing.
Writing will forever be important, I write and then ask ChatGPT to make it shorter, more readable or in list form. Either way, it is an exercise in gaining clarity.
I couldn’t agree more that writing is so important in collaborations. I learned a lot from you on technical writing during our collaboration.
I love the collaboration and benefits of tools like Miro and Lucid. But, when it comes time to capture, writing a document seems to work best to finalize a concept. Why? Well, for me it helps identify hidden logic that may be missing from a conversation. It helps the information travel beyond the participants in the meeting, and it captures intent, debate, for others who may come into the project later who need to be brought up to speed. Writing is essential and high performance teams do this in my experience.
Totally agree. When trying to break down complex ideas into logical structure you also detach yourself from your "box" and your perspective and this can bring you new valuable insights. And often does when I do it.
Crafting public documents is also a high leverage activity and can bring you a lot of recognition in the organisation if you do it well.
I started writing on substack too, with one of the goals to improve as a writer, but also that's a different type of writing than I do at my engineering job and I think I'm enjoying it so far
Reading, writing, and speaking are 3-fold and for communication, and communication is incredibly useful.
Thank You so much for this
I believe that writing would make software engineers better communicators. It would help us communicate our ideas clearly to stakeholders and our team mates effectively, in a space where technical documentation is so important on projects, I know this is an important skill that engineers need to get better at.
I think the people who can code well and write good technical documentation are going to transition well into the fully AI-assisted world. So much of what I'm seeing involves not so much the ability to code well, but the ability to write clearly about what you want your code to do. I think the people who can write decent code but struggle to write good documentation (comments and formal docs) are going to struggle to make the transition.
The tools are going to write more and more of the code for us. We're going to be spending more time writing about the code and less time writing code.
Recommend having a pocket journal, so you can dot down ideas and bring it when you go somewhere.
You can use your phone to type down your ideas, but for me, it's more fun and helpful to write them down in a journal. It comes down to personal preference, but there have been studies that show handwriting is more effective for learning and will lead to better understanding than typing.
Typing is faster tho 🙂
The other day I was asking to some designer and product friends what do they do when they have more ideas than they can possibly implement.