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Comment by antirez | Hacker News Reader

Many of us are programmers. Some of us are also trying to be writers. Trust me: writing is like programming. Reading code is very useful to become a better programmer, but you learn programming mostly by writing code. Similarly you mostly learn how to write prose by writing prose, tons of it. Reading is especially useful if you identify certain books that are very high in style (for me one of such books was "Vite di uomini non illustri" by Giuseppe Pontiggia), for your taste at least, for what you beleive the best writing is. You read these books many times, to understand what's going on, what are the patterns, how to do the same magic. As a casual reader you can read 200 books every year and yet remain a terrible writer.

EDIT: more about that on my blog if you care -> http://antirez.com/news/136

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I wrote eight books, sold about 35 000 copies (fairly huge number for Czechia with its not-quite-11 million people), and I am also a programmer.

The similarities are pretty strong. In both cases, you need to express yourself so that the receiving party may understand you.

That said, human readers are a lot more welcoming and friendly consumers of your written work than computers. Positive feedback from computers is basically nonexistent.

Incredible work! I'm writing my own book (obligatory mailing list link [0] and description [1]) and I wondered how you tackled the mental side? It is a bit of a rollercoaster I am finding. That constant fear gnawing in the back of your head 'is this really any good at all?' :) I suppose it is the price of caring.

[0]:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSen0gefOrPWi6ZtEQ25... [1]:https://ljs.io/book.html

Prior to writing my first book, I already published quite a lot of articles, so I knew that there was some non-empty audience set out there :)

I started a crowdfunding project for the first book too, so that the printing and typesetting costs get covered. They were covered fully, so I knew that I won't dip into red numbers as a consequence. (This was a major worry of mine.)

I was still pretty nervous about acceptance, but it turned out OK. Whew.

> Positive feedback from computers is basically nonexistent.

412 tests passed, 0 warnings, 0 errors.

I know, I know.

That said, receiving an e-mail like "I spent a week reading all your books, PLEASE WRITE SOME MORE" is much more satisfying.

I suspect this is tongue in cheek, but passing tests aren’t really the computer’s feedback. They’re feedback from Past You, who wrote the tests. The computer is just performing the tests. The tests might be incomplete or even wrong. The code might be horrendous. The computer doesn’t care.

Human feedback on the code, design, usability, appearance, documentation, etc. is all very different from passing tests.

Don't you want to hug your monitor when it compiles? :D

I do, the trouble is, the monitor doesn't hug me back :D

Right now I am sitting in a train to southern Moravia, a long-time reader has invited me to a pork feast. That is not what computers do.

Enjoy!

Absolutely agree that programming and writing have lots in common. I usually don't write anything longer than a blog post, but even a short blog post takes a lot of time for me. Expressing your thoughts in words is hard! Likewise for programming :-)

When I thought about the similarities I came up with:

- both are about communicating your ideas clearly. For that you need good structure, and having a logical order.

- editing and revising is key. Also, compare with refactoring in coding.

- style - there are lots of ways you can have a unique style, even in programming.

More here: https://henrikwarne.com/2019/03/30/programming-math-or-writi...

I write probably 30-100 emails a day, I struggle with writing longer form things.

About Hanselman got you covered

https://keysleft.com/

Personally waiting for the day when you can layout your thoughts in a bulletpoint list, and GPT-3/4/5 turns it into a coherent and pleasant to read whole.

If you don't want to wait, you can get someone on fiverr to do it for you.

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