My 4-point argument for encouraging the teams I join to scrawl their brains out. Literally. And literarily.
Look at these amazing company blogs - I am constantly learning from and returning to these; they are an excellent reference:
- Thoughtbot
- Intercom
- AirBnB Engineering Blog
- Code As Craft
- Digital Telepathy’s Betterment
- Basecamp’s Signal v. Noise
Let’s be like them.
In short, as Sally Kerrigan put it in Writing is Thinking:
"writing—that first leap into taking your idea and making it a Thing People Read—isn’t really about wording. It’s about thinking. Choosing the words to describe your work means you’re doing it on purpose. You’re going on the record as someone who thinks about why they do what they do, and understands how each decision affects the results. And developing this knack for critical thinking will also make you better at what you do.”
Writing forces us to rethink or rehash our ideas. Like forcing feedback from ourselves on our own ideas - helps us become better at critical thinking. A written record of our successes will help us to reproduce them; a written record of our “failures” will help us avoid reproducing them.
"Expressing ideas helps to form them. Indeed, helps is far too weak a word.… Just as inviting people over forces you to clean up your apartment, writing something that other people will read forces you to think well. So it does matter to have an audience.” ~ Paul Graham
As our collective ability to communicate accurately and effectively increases through practice, misunderstandings, social barriers, and the time it takes for us to collaborate will diminish.
The writing I’d like us to contribute should tell the story of our work, for our own sentimental review and for the benefit of people that want to get more context around a subject. Whether they’re onboarding or just trying to understand a new focus.
“…Much of the effort in writing, especially on technical topics, is in creating a narrative. By that I mean writing a piece that reads straight through, pulling the reader along…. What graphic design is to a visual idea, writing is to a verbal idea…. Craft my writing in such a way that makes it as easy and obvious as possible for the reader to “get” exactly what it is [you’re] hoping they get.” ~ John Gruber
- HOW TO: Write for the Design at NIPO blog
- Writing-first Design (https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3801-writing-first-design)
- Paul Graham essay The Age of the Essay, found via
- [On Writing] John Gruber, Paul Graham, Joel Spolsky, and Judge Judy’s mention of
- Shawn Blanc’s John Gruber: A Mix of the Technical, the Artful, the Thoughtful, and the Absurd
- Writing is Thinking (http://alistapart.com/article/writing-is-thinking)