Never start with a description of the weather
Neil Davidson of the Business of Software Blog posted an item the other day drawing parallels between software and writing tips from famous authors.
For instance, Hemingway once wrote that "The first draft of anything is shit." The analogy to software is that the first time you write code is certainly never the last. Or, another analogy could be that prototyping is throwaway (aka "shit").
Another one Neil tossed out is Hawthorne once saying, "Easy reading is damn hard writing." The analogy to software? It’s damn hard to write good software that is not only good from the user’s perspective, but good from a maintainability perspective.
Neil also brought up another key to great writing from Elmore Leonard: never start a book with a description of the weather. This one’s a little more difficult for a software analogy, but I think I came up with one (and left a comment for Neil):
Focus on writing software that adds value to the product. Anything more is waste.
If only we could all be so disciplined in following that key to writing (software).
Photo courtesy of areyoumyrik.
Filed under: Software
It may also be interpreted “don’t bore the user” or “start with something that will interest the user”.
Those are good ones, too. They hit on the idea of getting something working sooner rather than later..