48
8 Writing Tips for Software Professionals (optimizedbyotto.com)
submitted 8 months ago by otto@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev
11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

In this post, I share 8 principles I believe in:

  1. Less is more
  2. Start with the solution or the ask
  3. Show the facts, with examples
  4. Always quantify
  5. Include links and references
  6. Explain why it matters
  7. Ask feedback from one person
  8. Sleep on it

As engineers and developers, we often focus heavily on technical skills while neglecting the importance of clear, compelling writing. But the reality is, our ability to communicate effectively can have a major impact on our careers.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] astrsk@piefed.social 12 points 8 months ago

Good tips, but how does one practice them? Often times I see advice along the same lines but no offers on how to improve these skills.

[-] h3rm17@sh.itjust.works 4 points 8 months ago

Write to non technical humans and ask them for feedback, and if it is clear what's goong on even if they dont understand some stuff.

Then do the same with various levels of technical people and different walks of life.

[-] arendjr@programming.dev 2 points 8 months ago

I would suggest writing blog posts about topics that you’re familiar with. Make sure you write the posts such that also people not too familiar with the material can follow it. Share your posts, and ask for questions and feedback.

[-] astrsk@piefed.social 2 points 8 months ago

I have been thinking about starting a blog.

Any recommendations for self-hosted blogging? The setup itself might be worthy of a post :)

[-] arendjr@programming.dev 2 points 8 months ago

I use Astro, because it allows me to write posts in Markdown and publish as a static website, though there are certainly other solutions that allow you to achieve the same thing. I just bundle it up in an Nginx Docker image and host it on Fly.io. If you want you can look at my setup here, though beware it isn’t documented (even the README is already out of date): https://github.com/arendjr/phebe

this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024
48 points (84.3% liked)

Programming

17314 readers
378 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Rules

  • Follow the programming.dev instance rules
  • Keep content related to programming in some way
  • If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
snowe@programming.dev
Ategon@programming.dev
MaungaHikoi@lemmy.nz