Re: 10 Things All Technical Writers Should Do

[Chris Despopoulos <cud -at- telecable -dot- es>]

Harrumph.

As technical writers, one thing we should always do is establish 
appropriate limitations to the terms we're using.  That's how we 
establish a context, and then keep ourselves and our readers within it.  
I'm reminded of a poor soul I once worked with who was asked to specify 
the desired behavior of a GUI object that was to be dragged to various 
locations in the app window.  The spec would have begun with the 
invention of the mouse...  Except that computers in general had to be 
explained in order to place the mouse in its proper context.  Needless 
to say, somebody else wrote up the spec. 

Programming, as the word is almost universally used, refers to a human 
activity - the intentional ordering of procedures, events, or other 
"processes", usually with an expected outcome.  (Television programming, 
where the expected outcome is your continued exposure to sales 
pitches...)  I guess you could call human experiments in chemistry 
programming, but even that's a stretch.  It's more like cooking, where 
you throw things in a certain pot with certain parameters (heat, 
agitation, etc.), and let the ingredients order themselves according to 
natural processes.  But I can't accept that core natural processes, like 
the weather, for example, are programming.  They are process in their 
own right, and usually carry on in spite of activities that fall within 
the above definition of programming.  Not only that, but the complexity 
of these processes (the weather, or even human thought) defy human 
intervention, prediction, and programming.  (Well, thought may not be 
one of the more complex processes after all...)

Yes, it is remarkable that humans can perceive order in the universe, 
and political developments notwithstanding, that perception can indeed 
expand in its range.  But at the heart of that understanding is a thorny 
question - does existing order lead us to understanding, or does our 
understanding impose an order?  That question remains unanswered, and I 
doubt it will be answered here.  I think I digress.

I fall into the camp that believes order precedes understanding.  
(That's a *belief*, mind you.)  And so the idea that we *can* program 
proceeds from an observation of cause and effect in natural processes 
(real or imaginary).  In that sense, it is absolutely worthwhile to 
investigate natural processes.  A lamentable effect of our tech society 
is specialization.  Maybe you should read "Consilience" by E. O. Wilson 
for hopes of a utopian world where the separate disciplines (science, 
philosophy, art, etc.) converge.  But to equate programming and natural 
processes, at one stroke reduces the human achievement of understanding 
and "programing", and also elevates humans to god-like status.  I'm not 
willing to do either.  It reduces the human achievement by saying that 
programming exists absent human will.  But the human will, an extension 
of the basic will to life, has developed into a will to understand, make 
order, express order - for better or worse.  That is our crown jewel, so 
to speak, and I hate to see it denigrated. 

At the same time, your claim says that human programming is on a par 
with natural processes.  There's only one thing I can say about that...

Harrumph!