RE: Have to know Programming to be able to write about it? -- NO

["Gary S. Callison" <huey -at- interaccess -dot- com>]

On Thu, 27 Feb 2003, JPosada -at- book -dot- com (John Posada) wrote: 
> OK...a poll.
> If you have SME level knowledge in any subject and are a technical writer
> about that subject, raise your hand.

I've already written this post. 
<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.GSO.3.96.1030111121016.16773A-100000%40yin.interaccess.com>
As it says there, I have been a subject matter expert in a) air-freight
forwarding, b) US Army infantry batallion S-2 operations, c) telephony
NOC operations, and now I can add d) web applications and database
programming.

When I took my current job, I was a little hesitant to get the developer
tools installed on my desktop machine, as from there it's a short hop to
"I know you're not a programmer, but can you just fix this little piece
of code?". I'm not a programmer, although I know several programming
languages and have written production code. I'm not a programmer because
it's not terribly fun for me, I'm not very good at it, and there are
scores of people in this company who are dramatically better at it than I
am. Programming is not an effective use of my time, in the same way that
writing documentation is not an effective use of theirs. But I can read
code, find bugs, check logic, and document, even without comments from the
coder. 

It's not the ability to write code, or even read & understand it, that
makes me a good technical writer. It's entirely possible to write good
documents without this skill, and I have someone in the next cube over who
does just that. But that skill does help, and if an employer is offering
training, I'd certainly do it. 

-- 
Huey (double income, no kids - your mileage may vary) Callison


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 

LAST CHANCE for this steal of a deal! Purchase RoboHelp X3 by February 28
and receive $100 mail-in rebate and FREE WebHelp Merge Module ($339 value)!
RoboHelp, the Industry Standard in Help Authoring, has won over 55 industry
awards. For more information please visit: http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l2.
 

"RoboHelp X3 is simply remarkable." - George Bell, Techno-Vision Systems


---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.